March 15, 2013

Something I have not seen or heard once since moving here are leaf blowers.  I was having a quiet moment at home yesterday and noticed that I did not hear the constant far off drone of a two-stroke engine.  Thankfully, there is YouTube to provide some relief for this particular brand of homesickness.  One of My Favorite Things is to take a nap on the weekends, and it just isn't the same without that sound.  Think I would buy a white noise machine with that effect.

That is not to say that there aren't some constant noises here to replace the leaf blower.  One of them is the day long exercise fest in the park across the street.  Starting at sunrise and continuing almost unabated throughout the day and into the night, there will be groups of 40-50 something women Tai Chi'ing or dancing together.  Most of the time, there is no musical accompaniment and every 30-60 seconds, at the end of a routine, they will yell "hoowah" in unison.  Other groups will crank up a boom box and dance like this.  One of the groups across the street meets around 9AM and goes through their routines to the same song play list.  It kicks off with Henry Mancini's Baby Elephant Walk, and includes Starship's 'We Built This City' and I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston.  Amazing that their cassette from 1985 has lasted so long.

Aother white noise that is ever present is megaphone advertising.  There is a record feature on megaphones, and vendors will dictate their spiel into it and then broadcast it on an loop.  A lot of shops will hang one on their front door advising passerby's of their daily sale.  This photo was taken out front of the local drug store, and if my understanding of Chinese is accurate, think there was a special on some animal extract.

Quick digression, while walking away from this drug store, I see a lady take a tiny little snack dog out of her purse and put him on the ground to pee.  When he's done, she picked him up, took a tissue out of her bag and started wiping off his little weiner.  Totally makes sense, you wouldn't want to stain the leather of your Tod's bag with his dribble, but she was yanking so hard on the thing that it made me laugh.

What's worse than the stationary bullhorns are the trucks will drive slowly around town with megaphones strapped to the roof blasting information from their rigs.  Check out this link of a junk wagon and you'll totally understand.  Think Blues Brother's.  I'm guessing this is a holdover from the military government days telling people it's curfew time, and imagine this is common in today's North Korea with blaring testimonials about the Dear Leader and how they are going to set Washington DC on fire.

And at night, every night, the trash trucks make their rounds.  Check this out.   They all play this classical ditty and it is the lullaby that we all go to sleep to at night.

However, these noises do not bother me in the least and I find that not only do I welcome them, but need them.  I listen to some friends talk about getting away to total peace and quiet, and shudder as that is not the life for me.  When asked if I'd like to join them for some solitude, my reply is always "Dah-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue."