Linda Kennedy
I AM TYPING THIS OVER CONSTRUCTION NOISE. Oh, they’ve taken a break, I can stop shouting.
People talk about a New York minute. Fewer refer to a Hong Kong minute which is how long it takes your life to change when construction work starts next door. Or outside. That minute arrived in my life last week. 8.30am on Saturday morning. With drilling.
I am by no means alone. Insta-din descends quickly in Hong Kong. Friends text from coffee shops, refugees from their own hammering house horrors. If I owned a café, I’d market not just purity of beans but serenity of atmosphere. And have a sign: ‘Construction refugees welcome here’. We’re an easy crowd: we nod to each other – and never speak. That would ruin the silence.
I repair to the hair salon. There is construction work next door to it too. The stylist, as frustrated as me, holds the dryer too close to my ear and burns it. Just take them both off, I think. I’ll be grateful.
Coming back later, there are construction workers on a break to deal with. They are having cans of Coke and a fag on the stairwell. I pick my way carefully through, not knocking anything over. I don’t want my shoes ruined as well as my hearing.
Sometimes I work into the evening, on European time. And then sleep later the next day. Well, that’s not keeping Hong Kong construction hours so I’m now slumber-deprived. Then, to top it off, I read an article that reports how sleep loss means you eat 385 more calories a day. Next door’s renovations are making me fat.
Even my laptop seems to hear and seeks some peace. On my Facebook feed comes a link to mega-powerful ear plugs that will block out everything. Everything, they vow. I don’t like earplugs – they hurt my ears more than noise.
I find the Hong Kong Government website has a page on Noise Management. It talks of noise permits. Noise emission labels. There’s a phone number. I’d love to give them a call, and see if they could hear my shouting over percussion and booms.
Take a little constructive criticism, Hong Kong. You don’t care enough about noise. Whether it’s in the home or the workplace, people here are suddenly subjected to cacophony and supposed to endure it. Mostly they do. But why? Shouldn’t we demonstrate, workers, homeworkers, parents, students? No need to agree on a chant as it won’t be heard over the construction noise. Just do signs. ‘Keep it Down’. Or letters: ‘Ssshh’.
Activism is required. It’s time for a Noise Quality Index in this city. There already is an Air Quality Index, taken beside the road at various points. People tweet the level on bad days, vowing they will stay indoors. If there were a Noise Quality Index, it would be taken inside people’s apartments. They would tweet the level, and vow they would stay outdoors.
And general promises of a quieter future seem doubtful. If you live on a busy road here – I always seem to – you might have been longing for the day when electric vehicles would replace diesel and petrol buses and cars, imagining silence would be the new engine noise. Sure, there might be expletives if people’s batteries ran out, but other than that, a lush hush. Now I read that golden future won’t happen. Electric cars are to replicate engine noise, for pedestrian safety.
Hong Kong, you protest defiantly about so many other issues. Why not noise? There’s little point in having freedom of expression if no one can hear you.
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