There's an old folk belief that if you get a haircut during the first lunar month, your maternal uncle will die. No one knows where this saying came from, but it's been passed down all the same.
Unlike her father, who was better off without an uncle anyway, she and her two younger siblings had gone a whole month without a haircut. 'Of course, I wouldn't dare say that out loud,' she thought. 'I can only complain about it in my head.'
And so, she'd let her hair grow out quite a bit, waiting until today to finally cut it. She'd even sterilized the simple haircutting tools, like scissors, with boiling water and had them ready to go.
"How about it? My skills are pretty good, huh? I'm not just tooting my own horn—my talent for cutting hair is a hundred times better than my ability to write Spring Festival couplets."
