A stool, two hair clippers and five pairs of scissors make up all the equipment of what might be the world's smallest barbershop: a portable, on-thego kit that hairdresser Ren Peng hauls across farmland and village lanes every week.

"It is getting hot out here. Would you like a free haircut?" Ren calls out to an elderly woman tending to her crops during a visit to a village in Xixiang county, Hanzhong, Northwest China's Shaanxi province.

Chen Yuzhen, who has been spraying pesticides on her corn, hobbles toward him. Ren wraps a protective barber cape around her and starts the cut: the electric clippers hum steadily, and scissors click back and forth in a smooth rhythm. In no time, Chen's shaggy hair is clipped into a tidy, short cut.

As the nearest barbershop is around 2 kilometers from her home and Chen has limited mobility, she had not had a haircut for nearly two months before this free doorstep service.

For nearly a year, Ren has been crisscrossing more than 80 villages, trimming hair for over 800 elderly residents.

Ren, 37, left home to become a migrant worker in his teens, and learned hairdressing skills in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province.

He returned to Xixiang in 2015 and opened his own barbershop in the county seat.

In the following years, he witnessed huge changes across the once-isolated mountainous region, most notably the construction of asphalt roads connecting the remote villages to the outside world. Yet the improved connectivity also made it easier for young locals to leave the area in search of higher-paying work. The elderly were finding it more and more difficult to get haircuts because the village barbershops had closed.

On May 13, 2025, during a trip back to his home village, he saw his elderly neighbor walking for over an hour on a mountain path with a cane just to get a haircut at the township market.

"I know how to cut hair, so I can help them," he told his wife, and the couple decided to spend one to two days per week traveling to villages to offer free haircuts for seniors.

The initiative had a rocky start, with cautious elders, worried about fraud, rejecting his offer over and over again. Sometimes he drove two or three hours and waited on just a handful of customers. After multiple attempts, he managed to find a way: to win their trust by chatting with them and helping with farm work first before providing the service.

Ren's goodwill gesture paid off when he helped a 70-year-old local load six sacks of potatoes onto a truck. The man not only came to get his hair cut later, but he also brought his wife and seven other elderly neighbors along.

After that, Ren and his wife started helping local seniors with farm chores while making their haircut rounds: hauling soil, harvesting corn, digging sweet potatoes, and chatting as they worked.

"They were happy, and we felt full of purpose," he says.

The farther the mountain village was, the more the locals needed their help.

Over the past year, the couple has ridden tens of thousands of kilometers on their motorcycle to reach remote communities, sometimes traveling 100 km from the county seat to Dahe township.

"During the farming season, I leave early for the fields, as rural elders always get their work done in the cool morning hours," he says.

The work is exhausting, but to the couple, the villagers' warmth is far more rewarding: "Stay for lunch!" "Come back when the persimmons are ripe, we'll save you some!" Some seniors would press chestnuts and walnuts into their hands as a token of gratitude, while others would insist they take cartons of milk, fruit and even clothes home with them.

For the left-behind elderly in the village, the couple offers far more than just haircuts. Their regular trips help seniors feel less alone and add a little warmth and energy to their days.

Invited by 84-year-old Qu Jingyuan, Ren recently paid a home visit to cut the hair of Qu's bedridden wife and made a conscious effort to strike up a casual conversation with the elderly couple.

"I'll be back again in two months, and will give granny another trim then," he promised as he said goodbye.

"Even though we have less time to run our barbershop and earn income now, we've gained a sense of happiness that no amount of money can buy," Ren says.