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Experiencing the sound and fury of development

By Sandra Lee (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-17 10:48

Every morning at 6:30, a man passes by our place, yelling something like, "Paperbackwriterrrrryahhh". The ritual is repeated three times throughout the day.

I'm told he is actually announcing that he has gas for sale, and I soon learned that it is a fine tradition in China to have people calling out their services or the wares they have for sale. With so much modernization these voices are a link to life from long ago.

Compared to other forms of noise pollution, I do like this bit of pre-modern China.

Construction projects start as the sun is rising; horns honk madly and constantly; people scream at children and even converse in shrieking tones while standing right next to each other; dogs bark incessantly; the vendors shout out; in stores people bellow from one end to the other; those wretched car alarms go off willy-nilly and no one seems to heed them.

Restaurants are unbelievably noisy by Western standards. It is great fun when I take a friend to a favorite restaurant at about 5:45 pm.

My friend is invariably astounded at the staff lined up stiffly in front while the manager paces back and forth giving instructions and trying to boost morale.

We sit down, the only ones there, and order. At 6 pm the tide of diners rushes in. Within minutes my guest is wide-eyed with wonder at the volume.

Chairs scrape loudly, orders are shouted back and forth, dishes clatter, children run around, men light up cigarettes, several diners are shouting into mobile phones, and my friend will ask: "Why is everybody so angry?" I assure them no one is angry, they're just talking. In fact, if you look, you will see many of them are laughing (loudly).

This is the wild and wonderful scene at almost every Chinese restaurant and if you don't let it bother you, dear foreigner, you will enjoy the liveliness of it all. But it does take some getting used to.

There are other forms of noise that I can't get used to. I dread having a neighbor in the village die. Not because I know the deceased, but in this village that means three days and nights of non-stop fireworks, drums and horns and processions to wail about the loss.

Then there are the fireworks necessary to mark the many special occasions. The ones I hate the most are those that only have sound and make me think someone is shooting off a cannon. However, even the lovely sky-blossoms lose their charm after 10 pm.

All that pales in comparison to the latest entry in the noise sweepstakes. The other day we heard the dreaded sound of the weed-eater. This hand-held device is like a mini mower that can get under bushes and into other tiny spaces where a mower cannot go.

Our gardeners, however, have decided to ditch the mower, which admittedly is noisy but does the job fairly quickly, in favor of this new toy. The circumference of this fiendishly loud device-from-hell is about 30 cm. We have a small grassy area, but cutting it 30 cm at a time takes hours - and hours. All day, in fact.

Headaches abound. Concentration disappears. Teachers have to shout. Night shift people who are trying to sleep hang out of the windows begging for mercy.

Since part of my job includes a catch-all called "Teacher's Services", my phone rings non-stop. What can I do about it? Apparently nothing besides hoping we have very slow growing grass.