noise vs. Noise

(posted by Dave)

Before we left for China, we told everybody that we were going to be living in a sixth floor walk-up apartment. Thankfully, that’s not true - our apartment is actually on the fifth floor, not the sixth. Our building has six floors and four stairways. Two apartments per floor per stairway makes... let’s see...48 units in our building, times, say, an average four residents per apartment = approx. 200 people in close proximity. Add the 250 or so people in the building directly across from us, and more from the buildings outside the university campus behind us, all of the employees of the restaurants and businesses just outside the gate of the campus (also directly behind us), and all of the 14,000 students and faculty and staff going in and out of that campus gate, and it’s a major miracle that our apartment feels relatively quiet.

Part of that quiet is due to the relative lack of cars. The “small gate” next to us is only for pedestrians, bicycles and mopeds to go through. Judging from the number of cars parked in the “driveway” between our two buildings, I’m guessing that maybe 10-20% of the University faculty and staff that live in our complex even own cars, and they have to creep slowly past crowds of students through narrow streets to get anywhere.

Still, because it’s still fairly warm out and everyone keeps their windows open, we have no shortage of background noise for our life in China. It starts out at around five-ish, with the swishy sound of workers sweeping the streets with long handled brooms that are basically bunches of branches tied together. This is shortly followed by the dull clanking of the restaurant workers filling their pots full of water and putting them on the stove - most of the restaurant kitchens are on the back porch. There’s then a slow crescendo of babies crying (yes, Ysa often adds to the mix), the chopping sound of knives on cutting boards, the clatter of spatulas and hissing of woks, and more distant beeps and honks from the major street a block or so past the gate. Later on, there are the grannies hollering to each other and their grandkids as they head off to market, a second flurry of cooking noises around lunchtime, and then sounds of kids practicing piano and televisions going as people get home from work in the late afternoon. In the evening and into the night, more student traffic, the occasional burst of fireworks for reasons unknown, and maybe a loud domestic argument or two to spice things up. Oh, and a percussion symphony of water on sheet metal awnings when it rains, and extremely loud cicadas and crickets when it doesn’t.

Did I mention that all this noise still seems quite peaceful to me? Maybe it’s because we’re up on the fifth floor above it all, but now that I think of it, it’s probably because none of these noises seems particularly threatening to me. Having lived through my share of subwoofers, car alarms, and even 140 decibel Mexican bakeries (long story) during my time in Chicago, I think I’m realizing that what set me on edge about noise in the city wasn’t the noise part, but the perceived danger. Noise in Chicago triggered my reptile brain, because it was noise that I had to evaluate, however subconsciously, to see if I was safe or not. Writing this, I’m coming up with the theory that here in China is the first time that Somebody Else’s Noise is making me feel safer. Ask me again about this topic in a couple of months - here’s hoping it sticks...