Make Some Noise: The Visible and Not-so-Visible Dangers of Beijing’s Perpetual Din

“Noise pollution is a relative thing. In a city, it’s a jet plane taking off. In a monastery, it’s a pen that scratches.” – Robert Orben

“Bring the Noise.” – Chuck D

I’ve heard monks chanting their prayers in a monastery on the Tibetan plateau, listened to elderly Beijingers singing joyously in a park on a Sunday morning, and caught the cry of an eagle flying majestically over the Mongolian steppe. But on my death bed, I swear the most powerful sonic memory from my years in China will be that of a drill reverberating through walls and floors and burrowing its way into the reptilian part of my brain. You know the part. It’s the primordial core of the central nervous system, the one which occasionally enjoys crafting elaborate and baroque revenge fantasies against feckless neighbors in the middle of a home renovation project.

I get that I may be a little sensitive to noise. I grew up surrounded by trees in a small semi-rural community tucked in the far northeast corner of the United States. When I moved to Beijing it was, except for a couple of semesters spent studying in Singapore, the first time I had lived in a major city. It is entirely possible that I would have just as many complaints about noise had I settled in Boston or Berlin as in Beijing.

Or maybe not.

Noise pollution is a problem around the world but it is a particular issue here in China. Based on noise pollution data collected by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2017, two of the top five noisiest cities were found to be in China. Beijing took the bronze behind Cairo and top offender Guangzhou. (Let’s – silently – pour one out for our Pearl River Delta comrades ...)

A rough survey of friends – both expatriate and Chinese – similarly suggests that I’m not alone in being bothered by noise pollution. Car horns, bike alarms, construction sites, the ubiquity of Kenny G’s “Going Home”, were all cited as examples of gratuitous noise in our fair city. But nothing seems to trigger rage quite like the keening malevolence of the hand-held power drill. Few among us have been spared that sound. The unlucky few have had to endure it for weeks – sometimes even months – on end.

There are signs that things may be improving, but like many aspects of life in the Northern Capital it depends a bit on where you live. A few years ago, we moved to a reasonably upscale apartment building. Nothing super luxurious, but a slight step up from the six-floor xiaoqu complexes. Certainly, our new neighbors seem to think so. One of the advantages of being surrounded by snootily aggressive social climbers is that when one of their own foolishly transgresses the unmarked boundaries of appropriate middle-class behavior, the mass turns on the culprit with the ferocity of feral corgis chowing down on a bacon-covered bunny. This has meant an end to late-night and early-morning drilling, although what specifically constitutes “late” and “early” seems to have been left a little vague. It is still all too common to hear the drill bits of the apocalypse as early as 7am and as late as midnight.

Noise pollution is not only about having a neighbor’s home decorating obsession get in the way of a Netflix and chill night. According to the WHO, second-hand noise can cause loss of sleep, poor concentration, and high stress. Noise pollution can also have more serious effects, including raising the risk of diabetes, stroke, and heart attack.

The WHO also has suggested that noise pollution may “provoke annoyance responses and changes in social behavior,” which is totally going to be my defense in court if – purely hypothetically – one of my neighbors is ever found wandering the courtyard of our complex in a daze with an electric drill bit shoved up his ass.

There are no easy fixes. Noise pollution comes from a combination of sources, and sound travels in ways which make it difficult to contain. Excessive noise leaves no residue and enforcement can be spread over multiple agencies and institutions. In 2016, The Global Times lamented, “Environmental, cultural, traffic, industry, and commerce departments, as well as urban inspectors and local police all have the power to control noise. But when confronted with a specific problem, it remains unclear which department has jurisdiction.”

This is of course also not a problem limited to any one city, country, or culture. Noise pollution – whether from drilling walls or from some moron drunkenly wailing down hutongs looking for “his buddy Pete” who never seems to know how to get from The Great Outdoors to Café de le Poste – affects everybody who lives in Beijing. The issue may not be as sexy or obvious as air pollution, but the effects of living surrounded by second-hand noise ultimately also has a negative effect on all our health.

Photo: The Malaysian Times