No reader will be surprised to learn that it is noisy in China, this is (correctly) stated in all the books about China. Of course, here too this accounts “just” for the cities, but except for rare cases and the first few months in China when I spent my weekends in a charming village outside of GuangZhou, I am all the time in cities, living in ShenZhen as well as working for there and from there.
And if I am in China, I am spending every weekend in ShenZhen, I don’t or don’t yet travel – which I may be sorry about later – at all in the countryside. The reader will have noticed that I prefer to play football games on Saturdays and Sundays, driving by bicycle back and forth, celebrating extensive dinners with the friends, sometimes floating on beer, learning Chinese on Sunday mornings and, weather and work permitting, going photographing on Saturday mornings.
I am (or rather was) chronically, almost hysterical, allergic to noise. My family always rolled their eyes when we were sitting in the evening or on weekends in the garden and I (correctly) could predict that latest within the next five minutes, a lawnmower or a leaf blower would go off. Then my spirits were at rock bottom.
I’m a devotee of lonely and quiet nature. Sometimes I was alone, sometimes with my family, once with one of my sons on a week-long kayak trip through a deserted area in northern Sweden/Norway, spending wonderful times in a remote territory, mainly in the north of our globe, but also (because of diving or the cranes) in southern climes. However lonely, every now and then the loneliness was ripped apart by helicopters, private aircraft, motor boats, chain saws or other unspeakable engine noise (except for the boat-trip in northern Sweden).
Then I got hysterically angry, wishing myself into even more offside wild, and that I turned into reality – to hit at one (1) engine there, too.
But this is now China. I admit that the turmoil in the streets, the bustle and chatter in the restaurants, the masses of people everywhere, the scramble and yelling and shouting, the loud mobile phone calls (even louder than in German Intercity trains!),
the debates across the street inmidst the noisy traffic and the constant honking of the car drivers have early on terrorised me unspeakably.
But gradually I got used to it, I understood why it is so and not otherwise, maybe I am jaded, but I do not think so. Now, when I come to Germany every four to five weeks, I enjoy the peace, not noticing any longer even the lawn mowers. I confess that I have not yet become addicted to noise, but I can tolerate it now, even with road noise I can sleep at night to some extent.
On my bike trips to the football pitches (up to 14 km either way) I have learned to relax, despite the seething traffic all around me, despite the honking, the engine buzz, despite all clamour and confusion.
China has toughened me to noise, not immunised but made resistant. And more and more I understand: Everyone needs to find his place and audience among this milliard of people, and this is often to be done through volume, working itself up.
The foreigners in China seem to adopt this, especially Americans (who do not need to adopt it in the first place). Well, Americans are not really the most quiet of peoples, but in China – here they are louder than the Chinese. Whenever more than three Americans are together in a restaurant, you can be sure that they will predominate all Chinese people. And all listeners – if they understand American, because English was not enough – are ready to note: All these Americans are disproportionately talented showboaters.
This is not even matched by the loudest of Chinese, they are generally much too modest, not all of them but most of them. With Americans, it is the other way round.