It's both a blessing and a burden, and it's more than three meters long.

A 61-year-old Chinese woman living in Yunnan Province hasn't cut her hair in half a century, based on the advice she got from a fortune-teller when she was a girl.

As housewife Liu Pinhui of Zhaotong City told a local newspaper, the New Life Daily: "When I was about 10 years old, I fell victim to an odd disease. When I finally recovered, a wizard told my parents to keep my hair uncut to stay free of the illness for life."

The newspaper reported on Thursday that her tresses now stretch for 3.4 meters. The hair has become a protective talisman -- and a valuable one at that. Last year, she declined a 20,000 yuan (2,811 U.S. dollars) offer to buy it.

But the long hair is a hindrance in daily life, according to Liu. She has to pile it atop her head and it is "very heavy .. very much a burden".

And when she lets down her hair for a shampoo, it's a team effort. "I can't do it myself," she said. "Usually I need three people to help me, with two holding it and one cleaning. Each time it takes over two hours to wash and three days to dry. So I only pick sunny days for the job."

Liu said she doesn't plan to cut it for the rest of her life.

But she's not the longest-haired woman in China. According to Guinness World Records, the world's longest documented hair belongs to Xie Qiuping, with hair that measured 5.627 meters in May 2004. At that point, she'd been growing her hair since 1973, when she was 13.

(Xinhua News Agency, March 14, 2008)