Noise, Distort, Bang
Image-Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/48183141@N00/81384860/
I remember once hitchhiking down from Auckland to Wellington with a friend who now lives in Taiwan. We got a ride out of Taumranui with a couple of French guys in a beaten up old Morris Minor. They were pretty cool, and I particularly remember them tooting their horn at every cow we passed, honking at every sheep. To me it seemed quaint, very European, almost like something out of a Fellini movie (remember the opening scene of 8 1/2?).
For a few hours there it was entertaining. Here in China though, day in, day out it is nothing like being entertaining. Trucks gleefully announce their passage through red lights, taxis their intention to change into busy lanes. Luckily donkeys don’t have horns yet.
The Chinese seem to love noise, or at least they are inured to it. Shops blast out bad euro-trash techno with the hope of encouraging customers. Not sure if it works, but if I hear Sex Crime or any other of those tracks distorted beyond belief one more time I will use the amp in hitherto unexplored and quite novel way.
And the fireworks. Chinese New Year is the worst time of year for this but they pop up, I mean go off, quite unexpectedly at other times too. Over the 2 weeks of the Chinese New Year - until the Lantern Festival - it is open season on firecrackers. From 8am Beijing time (thats 6am local time) through to midnight they let off fireworks, long strings of crackers, rockets that pulse into neighbouring buildings and bangers that could otherwise be used as hand grenades. All this to scare away demons.
I understand that this year fireworks were allowed for the first time in Beijing in 6 years. That must have been hell on wheels.
At other times of the year, fireworks are used to celebrate weddings. Long strings of hundreds of small crackers are delicately arranged into heart shaped piles of noise to ensure the future good fortune of the happy couple.
Aside from this, fireworks are also used to ensure good luck for building projects. Last Saturday I was teaching class when, bang bang bang bang bang bang, several strings of crackers interrupted the almost serenity of our lesson as outside a ceremony was held to mark the turning of the first sod in the construction of a new building at our school. Two strings of firecrackers were paraded around the perimeter of the site of the foundations while another string dangled and popped from the bucket of a digger. Ten minutes later, out of a forty minute lesson, we were able to get back to work.
The Han Chinese have certainly brought ‘all that’s best of dark and bright’ to our little Silk Road oasis.
Links to pages related to noise pollution in China:
Urban Green Project: Urban Environment in China (from tom.com)
Noise Can Also make you ill (from Cite-Sciences.fr)
Links to amusing pages about driving in China:
http://www.talktalkchina.com/index.php/2006/03/08/drivers-ed-101/ (from talktalkchina.com)
China Driving Test (from koval.net)
Links stolen from Sinosplice.
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