A few summers ago when I was new to Shanghai, friends and I joked that the smell of the city was really just the smell of freshly cooked crayfish, lined up on a large cooking sheet and sold on the street as a summer snack, mixed with the smell of whatever had accumulated in the nearby gutter that day. If there’s a sound to this city that just as closely tied to my experiences here, it’s this:
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[kχʛɣʞɬgʞʞʞʜxkʞǁkxɣʞʞʞʞʜkɣʞʞgχʞʜχ ̚]
Every apartment in which I’ve lived for any period more than a couple nights has been plagued by this sound of neighbourly renovation. To this day I have no idea what the actual tool involved is. It was bad enough my second week since moving back to China two years ago that a friend and I got rooms at a hotel a block away for 2 nights just to get away. In case you were wondering about the recent radio silence, that’s the reason. I don’t have headphones good enough to drown that out for long enough to bother. But fear not. I’m setting up my iPhone to be a mobile studio for just that purpose. Expect a slew of supermarket clips in the coming weeks.
That was hilarious even before I clicked out of google reader to listen to it. Could we send that to greeksmatter or cyrillicsmatter?
We’re fresh off of six months of [kχʛɣʞɬgʞʞʞʜxkʞǁkxɣʞʞʞʞʜkɣʞʞgχʞʜχ ̚] here at our place in Beijing.
[weird aside: why does it come through as kχʛɣʞɬgʞʞʞʜxkʞǁkxɣʞʞʞʞʜkɣʞʞgχʞʜχ ̚ in google reader, but much tamer above?]
Looks the same in both the post and the comment to me. Not sure what’s up w/ Google on that one.
What the hell is that tool they’re using anyway? And six months? Good god, man.
I always assumed that was the sound a drill made as it was being pushed into concrete or brick walls.
When I read the email notification, I thought that it was a human speech transcription (being that IPA is for human speech sounds, and there being no indication that there is a sound recording included in the post). So I was going to comment that this sound is ubiquitous in China, almost always being followed by an unvoiced lingual-bilabial plosive (and then a splat as the phlegm hits the sidewalk, or linoleum, depending on whether you’re outside or in).
I was confused about the “tool” part.
Now that I understand what you’re talking about, I agree with Chris that it’s a drill on concrete (I’m not 100% sure though). That sound is pretty common up here in Jilin also.
Hi! I just wanted to let you know about my recently completed soundwalk project where local Shanghainese (in Shanghai dialect) talk about their memories of a location in Shanghai. Of course, it’s a bit deeper than this so please check out the project website for more info- http://www.growingupwithshanghai.com
I would love to heat what you think!
Thanks!
Terence
Hey Terence. I’m tossing a post up here to send people your way.
Anyway way to go. I’m enjoying the audio quite a bit.