Illustration The Globe and Mail. Source photos/Getty Images
Mai Nguyen is the author of the novel Sunshine Nails.
I was eight years old when my parents opened a nail salon in Halifax, a no-frills shop sandwiched between a Chinese restaurant and a tiny parking lot on Quinpool Road. I didn’t know it at the time, but that 2.5-kilometre artery is a major boundary separating the city’s South End and the North End – or rather, separating the rich and the poor. It was fitting that our salon straddled this middle; we lived between both worlds.
Before they opened their nail salon, my parents worked a relentless string of low-paying jobs, the kind typically relegated to immigrants who don’t speak much English and don’t have much education. They cleaned gyms, commercial offices and schools. My mother worked sewing machines while my father fabricated glass. On weekends, they picked blueberries to make some extra cash. They had arrived in Canada as part of the second wave of Vietnamese boat refugees who came to this country in the 1980s, after the end of the Vietnam War. They were grateful to be sponsored by Catholic parishioners in Winnipeg, but after a few years of living through frigid winters, they moved to Vancouver where the climate was a little more mild and the population a little more Asian. Despite the move, my parents remained stuck in this cycle of dead-end jobs where the hours were horrid and the promises of upward trajectory were non-existent.
For a while there, it seemed as if our family would forever stay mired in this low-income limbo. It felt like we’d always have to survive off measly paycheques, live out of mice-infested basements and count down the days until Sunday when we could restock our kitchen with whatever we could get from the community food bank.
So when my parents announced we were moving to Halifax so they could open their own nail salon, I was excited for them. Your very own shop? Where you get to be the boss? And I can hang out there after school and get my nails painted for free? I was a preteen at the time, and nothing sounded cooler.
Once my parents completed their training, they officially opened their salon in 1997. The offerings included everything from thick white tips to gold-hoop piercings to airbrushed palm trees (remember, this was the 90s). They named their salon Lee’s Nails because, according to them, Lee was a very auspicious name, and they needed all the luck they could get.
As I watched my parents toil over the hands and feet of strangers, though, it struck me as odd. It was such an incongruous shift from their previous jobs, and besides, they didn’t exactly have the most fashionable nails around. Their new vocation felt so completely and utterly random.
When I asked them why they chose it, they simply said: “Because all our friends were doing it.”
It was true. Every single one of their fellow boat-refugee friends – in Canada and in the United States – had opened their own nail salon. Queen Nails. Rainbow Nails. Spice Nails. Insert-jazzy-word-here Nails. News had spread: Nail salons were a lucrative, recession-proof business that could pluck you out of low-income status and push you into the middle class, and my parents immediately clawed at the chance.
And it worked. Over the years, as my parents’ salon amassed a steady stream of loyal clients who would return every two weeks to refill their acrylics and pamper themselves with pedicures, my parents were slowly able to afford a life of fewer worries. They saved up enough money to buy a house that had nary a mouse. They helped pay for my university tuition, along with my two younger siblings. They even traded in their beat-up Honda for a shiny silver Toyota Highlander that had – gasp – power windows.
When I got older, though, I discovered the true reason why so many Vietnamese immigrants gravitated to this one specific entrepreneurial niche: Tippi Hedren, the actor most famous for her role in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
In 1975, when the first wave of Vietnamese refugees arrived in the U.S., Ms. Hedren visited a refugee camp in California and felt compelled to arm these newcomers with skills that would help them integrate into American life – and so she and her personal manicurist taught a group of 20 Vietnamese women how to do a manicure. It was Hollywood, after all, and the demand for embellished nails was on the rise. Those 20 women went on to experience such success as manicurists that they told their friends, who told their friends, who told their friends – and so on and so on, until word eventually trickled all the way north to a young Vietnamese couple in Halifax desperately looking for a lifeline out of their dead-end jobs.
Like Cambodian doughnut shops and Korean beauty supply stores, nail salons today have become predominantly the domain of Vietnamese immigrants; first-generation Vietnamese Americans have helped build a US$8-billion industry. Salons provided these migrants with financial salvation, and they, in turn, transformed the industry. They made prices more affordable for the average person. They introduced new application techniques that sped up the process. They even normalized the male nail technician – once a rarity, but now a regular sighting at any Vietnamese-run salon.
Of course, like any job, it comes with its headaches – in this case, literally, from toxic fumes that can induce migraines that drive you up the wall. Your back gets sore. Your skin gets itchy. Hours are long. Tips are so-so. Competition is fierce. And the racial microaggressions are maddening. During the summers when I worked at the salon, I was told on several occasions that my English was very good. Once, a customer slipped a $10 bill into my pocket and told me to hide it, because she thought my parents were crooked managers who pocketed their workers’ tips.
And yet, my parents wouldn’t change a thing. It’s been 25 years since their salon first opened, and as they creep toward retirement age, quitting is the last thing on their mind. Recently, I asked my mother what she loved about the job. Her answer? “I like making people feel beautiful.”
If there’s anything the Vietnamese diaspora is good at, it’s turning ugliness into beauty. Nail salons are only one example.