What was a haircut called in ancient times?

The word "haircut" didn't exist in China at the earliest. The ancients thought that "hair" was influenced by parents and could not be shaved off casually. Therefore, at that time, both men and women had long hair, but their hair curled in different ways. It was not until the Han Dynasty that there were craftsmen who took haircuts as their profession.

During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the aristocratic children of Nanliang all had their hair cut and shaved. At that time, the barber industry was very developed, and full-time hairdressers appeared. The word "haircut" first appeared in the literature of Song Dynasty. Zhu explained in the sentence "It's a comb" in the annotation of Poem Zhou Song Liang Ji: "Hairclippers are also combs."

The barber industry in Song Dynasty was relatively developed, and there were workshops specializing in making barber tools. At that time, there was a special name for shaving hair called "Waiting for Letters". Later it gradually developed into a skill and an industry.

During the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, it was more common for people to get haircuts. In the Qing Dynasty, in order to realize long-term rule, Manchu nobles forced men to shave their heads and comb their braids. "Keep your hair, keep your hair." People have no choice but to shave off the hair on the top of their foreheads, and the hairdressing industry has developed unprecedentedly. At that time, there were barbers everywhere. Barbers sold iron clips (tuning forks) to cut people's hair.