How to Use a Razor Properly

How to Use a Razor Properly

I still prefer the feeling of a razor gliding across my face. No matter how many times I do it, it always carries something magical and difficult to name: it is extraordinarily sharp, and yet it can take away only the beard without harming the skin. Of course, that depends on keeping the direction of movement absolutely perpendicular to the blade’s edge. Even the slightest sideways slip can have serious consequences. Another necessary preparation is to soften those unruly whiskers first, while making the skin of the face smoother. The invention of shaving gel has greatly simplified this process. Before that, one had to rely on both hot towels and soap, and so many people had no choice but to leave shaving to the barbershop. Reclining in a barber’s chair in the afternoon sunlight, one’s face covered in foam, watching the barber skillfully strop the razor a few times before running it down along the edge of the stubble—within moments, the whole face would be renewed as if by magic, as though all the weariness and loneliness of life had fallen away with the beard. Such is the power of a razor.

Of course, compared with the dazzling array of bottles, jars, procedures, and rituals associated with feminine arts, it seems that for men, only the razor remains as a kind of secret craft passed from father to son. And even this skill has been steadily fading with the large-scale arrival of electric shavers. Electric shavers have become popular for good reason. Their greatest advantage is, naturally, convenience: if you want, you can take one out and shave anytime, anywhere. No hot towel is needed, and you do not even have to wash your face first. When traveling, and having to overcome all sorts of inconveniences, an electric shaver is of course the ideal companion. Yet the side effect of convenience is always a decline in quality. No matter how much the technology improves, an electric shaver can never shave as cleanly and thoroughly as a manual razor. So even when I have no choice but to bring an electric shaver on the road, once I settle down somewhere, shaving is still something I prefer to do stroke by stroke in front of the bathroom mirror.

Perhaps because of repetition over so many years, shaving has gradually become a ritual. In front of the mirror, you can see yourself as you are in that moment; you can see the weathering and erosion of time. At no other point in the day do you have quite the same opportunity. You may also reflect on profound philosophies of life—for instance, why hair on the head grows thinner by the day while the beard grows denser and denser, and whether some helpless sort of balance is concealed in that fact. Or you may wander through history and imagine Emperor Yang of Sui standing before a mirror, sighing, “This fine head of mine—I wonder who will be the one to take it.” But more often than not, you simply remain quiet, feeling the temperature of the water, the sting of the gel, the sound of whiskers being severed at the root as the razor passes over them. It seems that in this moment, only this one thing in the entire world is a matter of life and death. The razor in your hand seems to be all that you can truly hold on to. And yet you are never certain; it always feels as though there will come a moment when even this razor will leave you.

Just as you are never certain about the people who come and go in your life. Whether you are willing or not, every razor has its own appointed time to appear and disappear. Sometimes the blade has simply grown dull, no longer capable of facing the increasingly wild abundance of your beard. But you do not want to lose it, so you press harder, until you can no longer keep the movement perpendicular, and the razor quietly slips toward the side of your face, leaving yet another wound, blood flowing without end. Still, you cannot bear to part with it. And so you can only dry the razor, place it in a box together with all your memories, and store it on the deepest shelf in your heart. You know the metal will slowly rust and corrode. But so long as you do not open the box, the razor will remain there forever, preserved in your best memories.

Even now, I still remember the first razor of my life. I remember the afternoon my father handed it to me. I remember him telling me how to use a razor properly. I also remember the first snowman he helped me build in a distant winter, and the first time he poured me a drink at lunch one day... Perhaps that is the very best of a father’s love: nothing more, and nothing less.