A history of imperialism and post-war through the most innocuous object: the wig. We start with the export of hair for wigs, which was one of the biggest sources of Asian income in Mao Zedong’s China, move on to Hong Kong’s fundamental role as a trade hub and arrive at the American embargo on what they called “communist hair”, as a way of curbing Asia’s economic growth. All this is told with an unusual sense of humor.
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