We used to have a kettle. A kind of fancy thing that could not only boil water, but also keep it at various nominated temperatures for hours. Trouble was the blessed thing would beep incessantly and loudly every time it had accomplished one of its arduous tasks.
Then we recently opted for a yet-more high tech solution, essentially a tap capable of boiling water, and the silence that descended on our house the following morning was positively golden.
I once took a Chinese person to my home in the north of Scotland. On the way, we stopped the car in the middle of nowhere. It was the dead of night. I wanted her to experience something completely new.
Or many things. Above, our galaxy, the Milky Way, can be seen with a clarity that is virtually impossible anywhere else, without inordinate amounts of travel-induced hassle.
The freshness of the AQI0-air hit hard as we had come from a mid-90s polluted Shanghai. Then there was the absolute silence. There was likely not another human for 30 or 40 kilometres.
It terrified her.
And she said, “I want to get back in the car right now”.
Returning to 21st Century Nanjing, another beep has shattered the peace I’d been enjoying to concentrate for the last minute or so on this last-minute, down-to-the-deadline article. It’s the beep telling me the washing machine need be emptied. And if I don’t stop typing and do it right now, the beep will be back. On repeat.
What’s that old adage; “Just because something can beep, that doesn’t mean it has to”?
Machine emptied, it’s time for another sonic assault. In other countries, a simple and quiet alert, only audible in the immediate vicinity, is sufficient. But in China, a vehicle in the act of reversing need command an announcement which can be heard several blocks away.
请注意倒车
Take care; vehicle reversing
For noise, by way of intrusion is simply nigh-on unavoidable living in China. Former staffer for The Nanjinger, Laura Helen Schmitt, put up with her fair share of noise pollution during her tenure in Nanjing. She found it pays to start out on the right foot when deciding where to live, dispensing this valuable advice:
“Don’t move into entirely new buildings, don’t move into non-secure compounds, don’t live next to a big crossing, don’t live next to a large square or park, don’t live next to a car park, consider a flat layout, live high up, live less central and don’t EVER open your windows at night.”
That takes care of the big fish; the honking, the dancing, the selling, the building. Mostly. But Schmitt’s advice was proffered back in 2015 and since then we have seen significant success in silencing the Great Outdoors of China.
Nevertheless, it is only in the last few weeks that my local pedestrian zone, one of the busiest in Nanjing, has become bereft of that announcement selling stinky doufu with which alerts readers may be familiar. It’s the one that grabs your attention thus; “Hi handsome boys and beautiful girls (帅哥美女大家好)…”.
In fact, almost all of the loudspeaker-toting vendors in the vicinity have fallen strangely quiet of late. Of course, it may be something to do with the new law on noise control which recently came into force. Read more about that in this month’s edition of The Gavel.
Today though, noise pollution has upped its game and brought the battlefield into our own homes. And short of being a qualified electrician, there is little we can do to escape the audio pollutants that are a gift of technology.
The tap has beeped again, to tell me the water temperature has reached 100 degrees.
Terrific. But while Chinese shall deem that safe, I merely remain satisfied that those beeps are but almost, just almost, indiscernible. Until we change the damned kettle again.
