Celebrity barber Liu Qingchi barely bats an eyelid when an American businessman walks into his shop, having flown in from the United States for a snip.

While ordinary folk queue patiently for his 30 yuan-a-time (US$3.60) cut, stars go to the lengths of buying their own haircutting equipment for personal use only.

American Daniel Smith didn't know where to go to get his hair cut when he first arrived in Beijing. For the past five years, he has not changed his hair-style: short-cropped with all the hair cut to less than half-an-inch long, one of today's most popular cuts.

It is similar to the traditional Beijing-style box-top hairstyle, known in the local dialect as bancun.

Liu, a barber who has been doing bancun exclusively for years, was recommended to the uncertain Smith back in 1997. Word on the street was that he was "Beijing's bancun king."

Smith never looked back.

The tiny shop called Jin Bancun covers an area of less than 7 square metres on Ping'an Avenue. Liu and his three helpers receive an average of 70 customers a day, 365 days a year.

It's not unusual for Liu and his sidekicks to rake in 20,000 yuan (US$2,400) a month from their skills.

Clients he has served for years generally book Liu in advance: they have to. Sometimes, he offers home service and sometimes he works in the small workshop next to his parlor, where dozens of tool kits line the wall.

Many celebrities like popular TV actor Chen Baoguo have been clients for years.

So what is the secret of his success? "I am a barber. I know I can not be the only bancun barber, but I can be the best," said the 36-year-old native of Beijing.

"Fourteen years ago when I started the business I told myself this and now I tell the same thing to my students."

In 1988, Liu started to work as an apprentice in a hair salon run by two Hong Kong natives.

"I learned many haircut skills, but gradually I gravitated to the distinct bancun style, the simplest yet the most difficult style," he recalled.

"The rule is simple, keeping the hair short and almost the same in length. But it is rather hard to make the surface even and round up or sharpen the transitions between the sides and the top."

Partly it is a skill that can be learned, but more importantly it is about making instant judgments and quick decisions on the most suitable style for specific customers.

"Bancun can only be a general style that allows countless variations so as to suit different personalities," Liu said.

Years of experience has enabled Liu to decide on the most suitable haircut for every customer even as he walks into the shop.

An apparently simple skill has been converted into a small fortune.

Yet when he first started concentrating exclusively on bancun, he struggled to make ends meet.

"Bancun has a long history in Beijing," Liu said. "It hasn't been fashionable until recent years."

Song Ximao is a barber in his 80s. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all barbers.

According to Song, bancun originated early last century, and can be found in historical pictures of noted scholars like Li Dazhao, a revolutionary leader of the time.

In the following decades, the hairstyle developed different variations and took different names in different historical periods. It was at one time called xiaopingtou which means box-top hair style and was popular among students. It was also dubbed yibanqing, yibanhei, which means "half blue, half dark."

It was only in 1979 when Chinese audiences, impressed by Japanese film star Ken Pakakura's style in the film "Pursuing the Murder," latched on that the hairstyle acquired its present day name, bancun.

Ken wears short-cropped hair with sharpened corners on both sides and a top that is as even as a board, or ban in Chinese.

There is some irony in the style's popularity amongst celebrities, as Song explained: "People wearing the hairstyle were regarded as poor and of lower social status since they wanted to reduce the frequency of visiting a barber," he revealed.

Things are very different today. Qingcun, a name given by Liu, derives from the "half blue, half dark" style and is now popular among celebrities like film actor Jiang Wen, one of Liu's customers.

"Bancun loses its shape within a few days when the hair grows," Liu explained.

So the image-aware come frequently, some just five days after their last cut.

"Each of our customers has his own regular intervals," said Pan Xiaoyu, one of Liu's students. "I can tell who is coming every day because they are all regulars."

by Lin Shujuan