The Etsy shop's selling this wonderful pair of hair sticks for $5, with a US domestic shipping price of $6.I mean... really? REALLY? This shop claims to have made everything "in the USA".
Well, as someone Chinese and who's into "BIFL" items, stainless steel chopsticks happens to be plenty available in my house, so I definitely know a pair of stainless steel chopsticks when I see one.
In fact, after searching on Google for about two seconds, I found this exact pair of "hair sticks" for sale from two different distributors on Amazon, see here, and here. One link is selling 4 pairs for $6.9 including shipping, and the other link is selling 5 pairs for $10.13 including shipping. It appears I can turn a quick profit if I order some and sell them for a whopping $11 per set.
Heck, maybe I should dig through my kitchen drawers and put some on Etsy for sell. Mine are also decorated, and two sets have special good luck phrases etched in, they must be worth more?
Also, just what part of those chopsticks were "made in the USA"? Is that some kind of joke? Last time I checked, People's Republic of China and the USA were still two different countries, and I only checked about a second again. Let me check again now, yup, still two different countries.
So, as a Chinese with long hair, from a culture that invented hair sticks, I admit these two items are very similar, and I don't doubt they first came up with it because they have chopsticks and it's an easy way to put hair up. However, modern day hair sticks are at least decorative! Not to mention, these stainless steel chopsticks measure about eight inches in length. My shortest one was seven inches (and square at the tip yay!!). However you look at them they don't work that well as hair sticks because they are just a bit too long. (Believe me I tried.) Also, since when do hair sticks have markings at the tip? Those marks are to help people grab FOOD. FOOD!!
It sickens me when sellers try to rip people off. Also, if you happened to really want to use chopsticks as hair sticks, just get them from an Asian store. A set of 6 is probably going to cost you 3 dollars instead of the ridiculous $6 per pair some people are charging.
I'm a caucasian U.S. citizen who grew up in Japan (and old as dirt), and I'm always amused to see the chopsticks-as-hair-sticks trend come cycling around again. As P.T. Barnum is reputed to have said, "There's a sucker born every minute." But excuse me, I have to go check out my silverware drawer, muscle the forks aside and see if I have any lovely orphaned "hair sticks" with which I could eBay my way to riches. Wooden, of course, and plastic ones stuck somewhere in a drawer with cute little rabbits on them for the kiddies...
ReplyDelete