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ChinaLady

Does anyone else have this situation?
I am blown out of my flat my marching music every, repeat every, morning at 6am. now, this has eliminated all need of an alarm clock - BUT, it is sooo loud that after the marching music )no, it is not the Chinese national anthem - that would be sorta okay.) is repeated 6 times, some person starts speaking. now, this would be great - BUT - it is sooo loud you cannot understand what is being said - English or Chinese.
I have asked the students - Can you hear and understand the morning program? No, they say, it is too loud. How do we get it turned down to a volumn we can understand? We don't! It has always been like this.
But it stops at 7:30am in time for the 8am classes.
And. . . it all starts in again at 6pm in the evening. And blows us all away for another 90 minutes.
Ah, talk to the people in charge? Yes, they are in a sound proof booth and think it sounds fine! And the faculty wonders why the students are all wearing headphones and listening to the BBC or the VOA - to protect their hearing, what they have left?
Comments?

nolefan · Joined: 14 Jan 2004 Posts: 1458 Location: on the run

Generally speaking, my wife and I are not morning persons. I would leave that school in a hearbeat or demand an off- campus appartment..... I know what works for me and what does not.

We had a similar situation a few weeks back where one of the students decided to practice their flute playing right around 6:00 A.M. outside our building..... I was not a happy camper. I made sure that the message got through to that person by letting my students know..... it didn't help Evil or Very Mad

after 3 days of early morning torture, I printed out flyers that to let everyone know that there was a bounty of 200RMB for whowever brought them to me.......I have not had an early wake up call since that day Twisted Evil

lagerlout2006 · Joined: 17 Sep 2003 Posts: 985

The real purpose of this is to teach us how to count to 8..EEEE Errr

Sannn Su Wu LEEEEOOOO...OK.

Really you must be pretty close to the speakers.

I am a sound sleeper or am on the right side of the building.

Guest · Posted: Tue May 18, 2004 7:07 pm Post subject:

From day 1 we have had music from the loudspeakers at 5.30 a.m. seven days a week since I have been here.

It is now 3.30 a.m. and I am already up, so it does not bother me.

What did amaze me however, was the choice of music - it is nearly as old as I am. One of the songs is older than I am - so I do not know where the heck they get them from. Also, the songs have not changed in the 9 months I have been here and it would be nice to have a change from time to time.

I think they use the music to wake the kids up but it also wakes us up.
It has never bothered me really as I go to bed early and ready to get up then anyway.

khmerhit · Posted: Tue May 18, 2004 9:12 pm Post subject:

There is a town in northern Cambodia that also awakens to martial music broadcast from tannoys on telephone poles. It 's an old commie custom, i take it, and anyway Cambodia is only two borders removed China. I didnt mind it , but then it wasnt too loud, and it was too hot to continue sleeping long past six.

In Phnom, there is no commie music any more, but ignorant people will blast their stereos starting at five or so. they do this in the countryside as well. There is no escape and it would be considered strange to protest against it, since Aisna are said to have a different idea of what is loud to what you or i consider loud. I dont know haow that can be, but I believe it.

Noise is horrible enough in the west!!

struelle · Joined: 16 May 2003 Posts: 2372 Location: Shanghai

It's also the norm at my school, but I can sleep through it now - fortunately none of this happens on the weekends.

If I get woken up by the music, I can look out the window at over 1000 people doing morning exercises in the courtyard. It's done like clockwork: first the national anthem, then stretching, then pushups, and finally 3 laps around the track.

While they do pushups, most students just lie down and not move, taking advantage of the crowd. But if they're in the front, they face the wrath of the PE teachers who walk around and blow whistles in their face.

It's that incessant whistle screeching which sometimes wakes me up, not so much the music or morning news broadcast.

Steve

goeastyoung(ish)man! · Joined: 09 Jun 2003 Posts: 139 Location: back in US

Luckily, I live off campus and not near a middle school. I think recently they are practicing for Childrens Day or something like that. My only problem is the occasional 7:00am FIREWORKS. I'm not talking about my love life; I mean fireworks and firecrackers at 7 freekin am. I won't miss this about China.

arioch36 · Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 3589

Yes yes yes! I gues they put up new, louder speakers this semester. Right next to my apartment. The Dean asked do I want to come back next year. This is a very real reason why I will say no. 6:00 in the morning, and at noon (so much for a snooze. My bedroom windows actually vibrate. And 7:00 Saturday moenings.

Thankfully the guy practising (practicing) Crazy English outside my window at 5:30 appears to have given up. Rather have the flute

7969 · Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 5782 Location: Coastal Guangdong

i thought i was the only one bothered by this nonsense. i like to stay up late at night as i am more productive then. but getting to bed late and having the backstreet boys blaring at 6:30 on your day off (and weekends) is just crazy. and the whistles....

senor boogie woogie · Posted: Thu May 20, 2004 2:44 am Post subject:

Hola!

My first job in Mainland China was working in a High School in a medium sized city in Zhejiang Province. Every GD morning at 6 AM, they would blare this insane classical music at high volume. If this was not bad enough, some coach/teacher with a whistle would blow excessively while the students all run out from the dowms in one robotic mass.

Why the music? Why the whistle? Why do these people make all this noise? Also, why is a strength of character the ability to wake up at 6 AM?

I sleep in now and live in a quiet place.

Senor

ChinaLady · Posted: Sat May 22, 2004 1:43 pm Post subject: the morning LOUD speakers?

thanks for all the comments. you have made me understand that I not the only person who thinks this is a bit crazy.
and counting - my PE teachers only go to "san." guess they haven't learned to count to "leo" as yet.
and, yes, I agree, it is the volumn AND the type of music. would Wagner be asking to much? or Bach? ah, yes, the Backstreet Boys - yuk. maybe some BB King? ha!
smile - TIC - this is China.
ah, I feel so much better.

kev7161 · Joined: 06 Feb 2004 Posts: 5880 Location: Suzhou, China

So, here's my question for everyone: Has anyone made a personal complaint against this loud, early morning ruckus? And I mean a real complaint. Type it up in English then get a Chinese friend to translate it into Chinese. Make copies and pass them out. Meet with the principal to get to the bottom of this. And if you have, what happened? What were the results? Did you tell them that this was NOT to the well-being of the children or to yourself? Did you ask them to remove the speakers near your apartment? Did you cut the wires yourself?

I'm pretty lucky as I live about a 10 minute walk away from my school so I don't have to deal with this. Once or twice on a particularly quiet morning I've heard a faint bit of morning hi-jinks but never knew what it was.

Arioch, have you told your school, "One of the main reasons I'm not coming back is the loud wake-up call in the early morning!" ?? If you did, what was the response? I know the score when it comes to things being done "The Chinese Way", but I'm still curious.

ChinaLady · Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 4:29 am Post subject: yes, yes, yes. . .

yes, I talked to the station manager about how loud it was/is.
yes, the students talked to the station manager.
o, yes. the "station manager" lives in the station at the top of the building where the speakers are mounted.
yes, we wrote a letter - the majority of the Chinese faculty lives "in town", the people "on campus" are the students, the retired teachers (who after 20 years of this stuff are deaf), the foreign teachers and the workers (cooks, sweepers, drivers, etc) who are so glad to have a job and a place to live they complain about NOTHING - in Chinese and English.
yes, someone??? (not me, I hate heights) climbed up and cut the wires. TWICE! now the door to the roof is locked.
yes, we still comment about the how LOUD the music/stuff/speaking is.
this is China. Smile.

wu · Joined: 01 May 2004 Posts: 20

I don't live at my school but I live across from a park and have the same problem. Every morning the loudspeakers start up between 5:30 and 6:00 - 7 days a week. If it isn't the music, the lion dancers and drummers are banging away. For about 6 Saturdays (my only day off) in a row a horrible man was selling some kind of health product and he was speaking in the horrible local language in my town. People in my apartment building would shout out windows for him to stop. Shutting windows did not lessen the sound. At night we have a karaoke bar close by and the serenading usually lasts well past midnight. Why does everything have to be so loud here? It is driving me crazy. I swear I have aged 10 years from the noise, the traffic, the pollution and the general rudeness of the local people.