The Sociability of Noise

We were sitting at a restaurant last week and I suddenly noticed how noisy it was. You tend to block out the noise in this country, but when I found myself literally bawling at the person next to me at the table, it hit home.

We call this restaurant 'Big Portions'. All the restaurants we go to have been re-christened in English by the teachers, as it's just too damn difficult to remember their Chinese names and it saves any mix-ups. 'Meet me at Big Portions', rather than, 'Meet me at the restaurant on such-and-such a street with the red sign and the round tables', or, 'Meet me at wa ga bu ge bu'. There's also Whistling Fish, Tartan Tables, Donkey Meat, Long and Thin, Chez Roddy's and The Shepherd's Pie Place. We like Big Portions the best, for obvious reasons. The restaurants are always busy and always noisy.

Here are some other noisy places I know:


The Internet Café


Crowded with teenage boys playing computer games. Smoky, smelly and dark. When you finish sending your emails, you walk out with jangling eardrums, a headache and your hair reeking of cigarette smoke. If you are really unlucky, you’ll have an absolute psychopath at the computer next to you playing Counter Strike or Tomb Raider. He'll crowd your personal space as he plays, elbow banging against you repeatedly as he shoots aliens or drops bombs from helicopters, dodges bullets or screeches his rally car round a corner.

He'll be involved in numerous shouted conversations with his friends, who are playing the same game on other computers around the room, demanding to know how they are doing and giving them regular updates on himself. If he's doing well, he'll scream with pleasure at the top of his lungs, attracting a scrum of spectators around his computer screen, hemming him, and you, in. If he's doing badly he'll shout and swear imprecations and threats at the monitor. One minute, he's howling with pain, the next celebrating wildly.


Bus Stops


Busses themselves are relatively quiet compared to the bus stops, the people having tired themselves out by the hard-fought victory it is just to actually get on one. If you get a seat, you sigh with relief and fall into a catatonic state for the rest of the journey. If you don't get a seat, you expend your remaining energy hanging on for dear life. Either way, you don’t feel much like talking.

Bus stops, on the other hand, are beehives of activity, anthills of action. People crowd and jostle to get into position, drivers and conductresses spit and scream out of the bus windows, taxis pull up and the driver implores you to get in, people gossip, rant and shout at each other. Cars, trucks and motorbikes flash past at dangerous speeds on the icy roads, horns blaring. Then, when the right bus pulls up, people sprint and crowd around the door like rugby players fighting for the ball. All that just to get on a bus.


Department Stores


Are just a complete assault on your senses. The underground market and the huge multi-level stores such as Hi Buys or Manhattan are a seething mass of humanity, cheap clothes, dodgy electrical goods and household appliances, fake-leather shoes, paper flowers, picture frames, toys, watches, jewellery, you name it, it's there. Entering one of these places in your thick winter clothes is like moving from an icebox to an oven. Your frosted face quickly starts to sweat. You step on someone's toes, try to turn round to apologise, elbow someone else, then get pushed in the back and thrust towards the cheap colourful Aladdin's Cave of treasure, all to a soundtrack of haggling, arguing, exhorting and extorting.


English Corner


I've never seen anything like English Corner at HIT University, or 'International Dateline', as some of the teachers call it. HIT is a technological university, one of the top ten in China, and therefore massive. Chinese people, mostly students, but also housewives, businessmen and workers, go to English Corner to practice their oral English. Most of the foreign guys go there to meet girls.

Not wanting to sound bigheaded, but now I know how a film star feels when mobbed by adoring fans. There must have been at least one hundred Chinese people per foreigner. You're surrounded by a throng of people then subjected to the most boring interrogation, which soon becomes a subtle form of slow torture, like drops of water steadily, remorselessly, dripping in a dark cell.

'What's you name?'

'Where are you come from?'

'Do you like China?'

'Do you like dumplings?'

'Do you have girlfriend?'

Again and again and again. Some students have an agenda and hang onto it like a dog with a bone. An architecture student will ask you if your country has any Gothic spires or Byzantine archways. A tourism student will want a detailed description of your country's scenery. A football fan will ask you if you've ever met David Beckham. The people crowd round so close that, at one point, I actually butted a girl standing right behind me with the back of my head. When you leave English Corner it's very easy to get knocked down by a bus: your brain is on information overload and subconsciously you're repeating, zombie-like, 'Nice to meet you. My name is Ross. I am from Scotland. Yes, I like dumplings'.

So, back to Big Portions: it was getting late, but the restaurant was still full of noise. Anita shouted over to me:

'YOU WOULDN'T THINK THERE WERE ONLY TWO TABLES LEFT EATING HERE, WOULD YOU?'

I looked around and saw she was right. The restaurant was almost empty. However, the Chinese gentlemen playing a drinking game at the next table were making enough noise to fill a concert hall.

In Britain, this would be deemed anti-social behaviour, and the manager would be coming out to politely ask them either to make less noise or leave. When you hear noise like that in a restaurant or bar in Britain, you brace yourself for violence: the only noise like that back home is drunk guys about to fight each other. In China, they're just being sociable. The young guys screaming across the room to each other in the internet bar are only making conversation; the lady screaming at you from a bus window is just trying to drum up business; the shoppers screaming at each other in the store are simply enjoying their haggling banter; the students screaming at you at English Corner are merely practising their English.

Often in China you can only get what you want by shouting. In Britain, if the waitress has forgotten your beer, you sit and twiddle your thumbs, trying to catch her eye, not wanting to cause a fuss. In China you shout:

'FU WU YUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! PI-JIIIIIUUUU!'

At the top of your voice. And you don't even have to say thank you.