The conversation between the two men in their native Cantonese flowed easily.

For Chai, it was just another day at his Hollywood and Shanghai barbershop. Many of his customers are the ones who have been coming to seek his services for nearly five decades.

However, it didn’t seem so long ago to Chai when he first arrived at Sandakan in 1970. Having acquired hair styling and cutting skills in his home town of Kuching, Chai came to this Sabah east coast town to work at the barbershop located just a stone’s throw from the town field.

At that time, Hollywood and Shanghai was the premier barbershop for men and hair salon for women. Occupying an entire shoplot at what is known as the Singapore Road area, half of the premises was the barbershop and the other half the hair salon.

“Back then, Hollywood and Shanghai was the premier barbershop in Sandakan. You could see rows of Mercedes-Benz cars parked outside,” Chai recalled while waiting for his next customer.

The barbershop was set up by Sandakan businessman Mark Pang in the late 1950s and he initially hired a group of barbers from Shanghai to operate the venture.

Pang’s son, Peter, said that while the barbershop was on the ground floor, his family used to live on the third floor of the shophouse building.

As it is now, the name of one of the world’s movie and entertainment centres was associated with glitz and glamour and was a fascination of the elder Pang.

“My father named it Hollywood because it was on his bucket list, a place he wanted to visit. He and mum did go there years later,” said Peter, a former Sabah deputy chief minister and youth and sports minister.

He said Shanghai was added to the shop’s name years later with the change of ownership of the business.

When the business was set up, Sandakan was in the midst of a timber boom and by the time Chai began working in the shop, the regulars there were among the town’s who’s who of the community.

“Hollywood was the first barbershop in Sandakan to be air-conditioned,” said Peter.

He said that after the first group of Shanghainese barbers were brought in to work in the shop, the next ones were from Hong Kong.

Chai said it was not surprising that many timber tycoons would drop by the shop to get their hair trimmed as the office of their association was on the first floor of the building.

Having settled down in Sandakan and raising his family of three children, Chai and three other workers eventually took over the business in the 1980s as the first batch of barbers retired.

Over the years, the Hollywood and Shanghai barbershop has lost some of its glamour. Singapore Road is now what some Sandakan folk consider a rundown corner of the town. The shop has seen the number of seats reduced from eight to three although Chai is the only barber there.

The women’s hair salon had shuttered more than a decade ago and the premises rented out to successive tenants.

“I don’t really need to do this but I keep this going so that I have something to do,” said the grandfather of five.

Asked about the future of his shop, Chai shrugged and said: “I’ll just keep opening for as long as I can.”