China’s noisy ‘dancing grannies’ silenced by device that disables speakers
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/144646248724781465...
I kind of expected a Bluetooth jammer.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japanese-researchers-make-speec...
Here’s the same concept you can try with headphones.
When I traveled to China frequently enough to soak up some aspects of city life I really enjoyed seeing the outdoor activities: Dancing grannies, martial arts classes in parks, old guys playing cards on folding tables in alleyways.
I wonder what's driving the upsurge? It's the same in the UK too.
I remember being at a park party a few months ago with some fellow 20-25 year olds; I suggested turning the music down, but it took the police to kindly ask for the request to be heeded. What astonished me was that the 20 something girls were indignant at the police's request, as if their human rights were violated.
I don't mind police, but they need to work on discipline. They need to be around more even when they're not responding to anything (proactive instead of reactive).
Back in the day (not my day mind you, lol), every neighbourhood would have a neighbourhood policeman that would do the rounds, do a chat with the locals, that kinda thing. But that was the same time where people working for the post were still respected (by their employer); uniform, full-time job and benefits, the works. Nowadays it's an underpaid part-time mcjob.
I went to camping on Dartmoor with a friend about a decade ago, he just started screaming out and playing music out of nowhere. He grew up in London like me and for some reason he was unable to handle the absence of noise when we were the only people who miles around.
The most baffling part is it's often people on their own, not in groups. Every time I think to myself that now might be the time to pull out the old homemade EMP gun and take it for a spin.
I would never do this because there are probably some highly unfortunate unintended consequences and I don't want to go to jail.
While we're at it, I hate rock cairns too, aside from those used to actually help people by marking routes. I didn't go to the forest to see trash, graffiti, rock cairns, or other man-made creations.
In my local nextdoor.com thread there was a GIANT flamewar over rock cairns and inspirational painted rocks along hiking trails. "But think of the children!" who like painting rocks and leaving inspirational messages!!
I briefly thought about painting and leaving some "demotivational rocks" around until I realized I'd have to actually collect, paint and distribute rocks to make that happen.
But at the least they could use paint or crayons that just wash off after a bit of rain.
Definitely interesting to explore these boundaries.
The people who are against music and cairns in parks are not protecting any natural law. They are protecting their specific terraforming project, a park. It is driven by a purely human concept of "sustainability" and cannot possibly be something that existed in a world without humans.
Now, that is a nice terraforming project they are protecting (notice how "nice" is another human concept?) We also tend to spend a lot of energy protecting species that trigger the same neural pathways in our brains as human babies, even if the species would most likely go extinct without our intervention (pandas).
What environmentalism actually does is act as a brake on our other terraforming projects, allowing us to go on terraforming longer and not turn our environment into something inhospitable. But even that is entirely anthropocentric.
Littering saves yourself the hassle of cleaning up after yourself. Leaving crash pads behind serves a need for safety. These are selfish acts that benefit you for practical reasons while ignoring the well-being of the environment around you.
Rock cairns, while (probably) less damaging, serve no purpose other than leaving a trace for the sake of leaving a trace.
The problem with emotional acts is that it provokes different responses in people. An innocent stack of rocks gets bested by a bigger one. The bigger stack gets bested by a wider one. The wider one gets trumped by a painted one, and so on.
Look at the example of Mt Everest. Many parts of it are a high altitude garbage dump, turning a unique place into a sort of monument to the throngs of bored dentists looking for a thrill.
The music thing is a big issue in the climbing community, mostly younger / newer climbers. I don't mind in some places if they are somewhat contained and they ask first. but not in national parks, nothing loud, and nothing obnoxiously distracting.
Some funny 'drama' on Instagram between a very skilled teenager and an older leader in the community. Kid played music in a national park and complained about not being able to find stashed pads on Instagram (leaving large foam in a national park === bad).
The older community leader posted a photo of him and park rangers taking trash/pads down. Didn't mention the kid but oh boy that kid did what a lot of teenagers do and barfed out a lot of drama. it was funny to read. Made me feel very much in old man on the stoop territory. There were more supporters taking the side that stashing pads and playing music is acceptable in a national park, and the older leaders who actually interact with rangers are 'gate keeping' and just don't understand ;0
But alternatively, just use a selfie stick, the previous biggest nuisance.
Just take your shit back home.
Think of it as my own version of the noise emitting devices on EVs. On the one hand I kind of feel like a dick but on the other hand I still make much less noise than a car and there's no other way of people knowing I'm there when they don't have LOS.
Pedestrians need to notice me because a lot of people walk on bike paths and because a lot of people jaywalk. Since I'm much closer to the parked cars and much smaller than cars they're going to realize there's no cars, think it's all clear, and when they advance I'll be there. It happened to me often.
It's not loud enough that people on the sidewalk will hear me clearly - in traffic I often can't even distinguish my own music - but people that are on my way or about to walk in front of me will notice and that's good enough.
Also in my city when there's an underpass the law is to go on the sidewalk, so I like to be noticed by pedestrians so they know I'm here without ringing my bike bell non-stop or speaking to everyone and trying to get them to notice me.
I wonder if there’s some happy medium - some noise that the bike could make periodically that’s less annoying than blaring music, but also doesn’t require you to actively initiate it.
With a bike travelling at say ~10mph the noise is out of earshot in a few seconds.
It is on you to ride defensively and make sure you are on an appropriate speed to avoid accidents with pedestrians, not on them to avoid you.
> when there's an underpass the law is to go on the sidewalk
So, get off the bike and walk.
>So, get off the bike and walk
I am not supposed to and I frankly just don't have the time to walk every time there is an underpass, and there are 6 on the way to my university.
I think I'm very different from those car drivers because I'm not endangering or pushing away anyone, or being aggressive.
I haven't made any judgments of value, mind you. I'm just saying that this is the only way I have of averting this issue.
I certainly agree that ebikes can sneak up on you. Personally though, I would give up riding a bike if I had to use a fairly loud white noise generator.
Nature sounds would be good for humans, but they might be disruptive to the fauna. Perhaps there's something that can be done about that though.
Whether phone speakers are good enough to replicate that experience, however, I’m not sure.
Unlike cars, bikes are very quiet and if a pedestrian comes out jaywalking from between parked cars, the biker might not have enough time to react and ring their bell.
By the time a bell rings, the collision is imminent. Music can be heard from far enough that a jaywalker can avoid the collision path preemptively.
I'd like to emphasize that the music is not that loud - when I'm close to a car I can barely hear it.
I really think a bike bell should be sufficient for your needs. A card in your wheel spokes would also get the job done and be a lot less obnoxious than music.
I do have a bell. It's useful. But when someone pops out of between two cars there's nothing a bell can do.
While there are of course lot of polite civilized old people, many of them have absolutely no respect for environment or rules. You'll often see them throwing waste oil to the streets, littering, yelling/screaming in public for no reason, breaking every single traffic rule in existence, jumping the queue in supermarkets etc.
Lot of of younger and/or "less older" generations are also pissed off about this and local governments here in SH and elsewhere are trying to create new regulations to mitigate these issues: https://www.shine.cn/news/nation/2108183694/
My mother-in-law is quite a reasonable and well respected person (she was a teacher and gets gifts from ex-students to this day, and she doesn't even live in China anymore), but the fights my wife has gotten into with her due to this "respect for elders" thing are... something else.
The whole dynamic reminds me of a tradition in Brazil where senior students in universities play pranks on new students. The general gist is that pranks can be pretty nasty (getting your head shaved and your face covered in paint is standard fare treatment and things just get worse from there), and the tradition gets passed on in a "now it's my turn to be nasty" sort of way. Predictably, things can and have gotten out of hand on several occasions and pretty much everyone knows of at least one urban legend/story of someone drowning or getting seriously injured in some other way. Unsurprisingly, some schools ban these pranks, not unlike these regulations you mentioned.
People will be people, I guess.
I can see how the music could be frustrating, but I think it would really be unfortunate if this part of the culture went away.
You can tell by the way I use my wok.
Funny story about dancing grannies in Taipei, back in 2016. My boss asked me to go up from Kaohsiung to attend the Python Conference. But I was facing some very tight financial times, and paying several thousand NTD for the conference fee (which wasn't refunded by the company later) was difficult for me.
So I took a cheap night bus instead of HSR train, rode a city bike instead of the MRT, and arrived at 6 am for the conference at 11 am, hoping to sneak inside the conference venue during setup.
How could I loiter there without attracting attention? Well, there were a group of grannies dancing. So I joined them!
We had a great time, and some of them even offered to introduce me to their granddaughters. And when the time came, I bid them farewell, tailgated into the venue, opened my laptop and looked busy. The dancing grannies were so hospitable, though, welcoming a crazy foreign boy and being rather too trusting.
I live in a city, and accept that dealing with noise is a part of life. And I expect these dance-exercise meetings are actually great for the people who participate; certainly here in the US I know that the elderly often feel alone and have trouble maintaining social relationships the older they get. Not to mention getting outside and exercising is great for physical health.
But if you wake me up early in the morning with loud music I will end you.
That seems pretty unruly, but it could easily be the vast exception.
Easy there, John Wick.
Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.
— Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
“Square dancing is a problem left over from history. Many elderly people feel that the whole China is built by their generation. They have the absolute voice and status. We young people have done nothing, and of course are not qualified to question them.”
Is this accurate?
https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/arti...
> According to the Post, square dancing has its roots in the Cultural Revolution, particularly the great link-up of 1965 and the educated youth campaign in 1969. The damas are of middle age because square dancing links back to these moments of their youth when collectivism was an important social value in China.
I think the boomers were overall wealthier than the Greatest Generation and that's also why they had fewer children.
Already back then, the People's Park had decibel meters in every spot the oldies congregated, warning them if they went over the limit.
Once I also watched quite an old gentleman performing (singing live to a backing track) folk songs from Inner Mongolia. He was really good at this and his voice was very moving.
Really wish I could see it in person again.
I do wish mainland Chinese were a little more mindful of others, especially in foreign countries.
In my experience, radio taiso also inherits a lot of the japanese polite culture. When I was young, my experience was that radio taiso always took consideration of surroundings: it was always in a designated space and time (e.g. the school gymnasium before class), whereas my experience w/ dancing grannies is that they just kinda make a habit of showing up at privately owned public spaces (e.g. malls) early enough in the morning and in a large enough group of people that security guards don't want to bother dealing with them.
This reminds me of this Monty Python sketch: Monty Python - Hell's Grannies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmzMzmnB-iQ
I didn't notice so much "just grannies", but couples, and it was mainly ballroom dance, not square dancing. I don't speak much Chinese, but ballroom styles are fairly universal, and the women were delighted to dance with a foreigner. Younger generations just kinda sat around on their phones but didn't seem bothered.
Put it together... "square dance". Hm. Accurate in a word-by-word literal sense, but the article writer is being obtuse in ignoring the more popular usage of "square dancing".
I think "field dancing" or "park dancing" might be a less confusing translation that stays relatively literal.
Though... if you're searching your memory for where you've seen this before and trying to remember by dance style... honestly I'd say it significantly resembles line dancing (which still shouldn't be confused with square dancing). Usually no caller (as far as I've seen), but everyone's listening to the same music, facing the same direction, and doing the same dance moves. Generally no partners--just a grid of people individually dancing in unison.
I would probably accept "line dancing grannies" as a reasonable translation. Less literal, but more descriptive.
Whether there is a caller or not is usually left to local culture. Not sure how ayi gets translated to granny, however.
>But neighbours complain it has gotten out of control, with competing groups blasting their music over each other in small areas, and bullying those who try to intervene. Viral videos and reports have shown the groups arguing and fighting with basketball players to take over their court, or, in one case, breaking into a football field and stopping the game to dance in the space, prompting a police response and arrests.
>Some disputes have escalated to violence.
>“Most of them are the products of the Red Guard era, they don’t respect society or the environment,” said a young Chinese resident of Guiyang, who did not want to be named.
>“Square dancing is a problem left over from history. Many elderly people feel that the whole China is built by their generation. They have the absolute voice and status. We young people have done nothing, and of course are not qualified to question them.”
>“I tried to communicate with them once, but the police stopped me,” said the Guiyang man. “They thought I was going to do something bad. You know the golden rule of Chinese policy: the larger number of people matters. Everything is based on social maintenance.”
Hardly sounds like a "really good" part of culture to me.
"China is home to an estimated 100 million dancing grannies. Square dancing allows older women, many of whom live alone or with younger family members who they accompanied on a move to the cities, to socialise. They form strong bonds, often shopping or doing other activities, including group investments, together, the South China Morning Post reported"
are most likely very, very high and almost certainly underestimated. The kind of social security that comes out of having these kinds of relations well into old age probably saves society an incalculable amount of resources compared to the risk of social and financial isolation if these women could not meet.
Maybe find a way to make the grannies a little less militant but you would be straight up foolish to not encourage the elderly to socialize.
I'd argue it's you who's underestimating the social and capital damage those gangs of elderly people hogging public places can cause to the working population.
It's apparent that had it been youngsters stirring up such racket in the name of "social benefits", they would have promptly been squashed. You can't just go and disturb and/or deny access to public places to other people just because you need to "socialize", it's just unfair.
The complaints I have heard have been very careful to separate the exercise, which is fine and good, from the excessive noise level during sleep time, which is not.
The article doesn't give a good sense of what proportion of that public is causing issues. Of course it's going to be easy to cherry-pick problematic behavior on that kind of sample size.
I'd bet the damage is nearly impossible to underestimate.
If only I'd thought of that line in junior high gym class. Of course, it would probably just have earned me twenty push ups and an even worse reputation.
In the US my local parks and public spaces have exercise groups (of all sorts), music events, kids activates, farmer's markets, ... events OFTEN.
The fact that there is so much space might make it seem like some are empty, but there's always something going on near me.
But it's almost never with loud music outside the dedicated music events that have spaces for just that.
Unless you are the dancing grannies, apparently.
And a FM transmitter is what I would go for.
In the US it's kind of "event" based. Like you have a farmer's market once a week for a few months... or a local yoga teacher offers weekly classes in the park to drum up business for their studio.
I've never seen seniors congregating in public spaces in the US like I have in various cities throughout China. The closest I've seen may be "mall walkers" who will show up when malls first open and wander around together... but it pales in comparison. It makes me wonder if we've ruined ourselves with our idea of individualism or something.
More lots of little events scattered all over the place. Events daily but they might be different.
If you don't 'go' to the park too it's not always obvious, but they're there.
From all I've heard the chinese work week is challenging enough as it is, even without noise pollution on top.
There are many ways to socialize and build community. Why do they need to pick this specific way?
I cannot understand the underutilization of public spaces. That's very far from my experiences but it may just be regional.
I have no idea what you mean about "many things become a financial transaction".
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
Lots of people in the US who feel there are no public city services often just don't realize the services their city already provides or are unaware of how to use them. Even in my city which has absolutely wonderful city services, I often find friends and neighbors completely unaware of the things which exist. We have busses running all over my town but I imagine if you asked any random person if they knew any local bus route they would have no idea where to even begin.
American cities aren't God's finest work, but I'm curious: have you actually spent any time in Chinese cities and if you have, how much time have you spent in second and third-tier cities?
> ...you get exercise...
Exercising in toxic air is of dubious benefit.
Chinese cities have much much less park spaces compared to the US. This is one reason for this to happen.
Another reason is the Red Guard generation does not care about the concept that you should not annoy other people in a civil society.
Another reason is that religion is severely suppressed by the CCP, so those retired people have nothing to do and no community at home.
Yes, but isn't the soccer style sport the anti-social behavior as far as space usage is concerned? A future generation of retired soccer players not limited by the one-child policy wouldn't need any other groups to fight with over land use.
My feeling is, it's harmless here. I wouldn't presume to tell the Chinese what they ought to do about it over there.
They make the public spaces feel 'alive'. I've lived in my different cities in the West including those in Western Europe and North America, and all too often public spaces become completely dead and devoid of life all because people have become so fearful of offending others or looking stupid. Everyone just wants to keep to themselves and be left alone. Suburbs are practically ghost towns with everyone (probably on their devices) hiding inside their homes. Physical social networks are clearly on the decline and as a result, depression and loneliness has become an absolute epidemic in the West. The problem only gets exponentially worse as one ages.
Happy dancing grannies engaging in physical exercise, socializing and helping to keep the community safe is what Western countries to be aspiring to have, instead of criticizing and ridiculing.
I know (hope?) you are being hyperbolic, but I don't think these two issues are as directly related as you make it seem.
In some of the large American cities where I've lived, the parks are populated by groups of Lululemons doing yoga in the morning. Some cities, like Chicago and Houston, even organize the events.
Considering the lifestyle I remember from my L.A. days, I'd say there's probably a yoga group in a park not too far from where you live.
Also, if it's dark out, people are generally sleeping- music should not be playing at loud volumes.
Just like it is hard to understand that these large cities are generally safe it is also hard to understand the amount of development that has happened. By now most would have probably heard the stories or seen the pictures of things like changing skylines. But it's different when you go there. Almost every year there is one or more projects completed that would have taken 10 or 20 years in western countries. And not just shopping malls but projects that actually do something.
It's really hard to pessimistic with that kind of change despite being faced with a very real reality everyday. We used to speculate that China might be the best country to be born in today. Because it would take ~20+ years until you enter the workforce. And if the next 20 years are like the past 20 years you could do really well. That outlook has of course dimmed a bit since then.
What I'm trying to say it that when people believe things will get better they don't want to give up their future. When things stagnant or getting worse people are hopeless they feel like they have nothing to lose. Crime seems to be factor of that. Maybe just not to those ending up committing the crimes but for everyone else as well.
It's not surprising to me that some crimes and social unrest is on the rise in supposedly prosperous countries when everything is getting expensive, opportunities are getting harder to come by and those opportunities you do have count for less. If those at the top of society all act like there is no tomorrow, or that tomorrow doesn't matter, we shouldn't expect those at the bottom to act any differently. I can agree that this sort of culture, the one of acts and impressions, makes a huge difference.
Unlike the West, if you’re a drug addict in a lot of Asian countries you’re arrested and put in jail. Or sentenced to treatment which is basically jail for people with mental issues.
Not sure we want to emulate that.
I found it quite charming, but I can imagine how it could be annoying in some areas.
Just like how after spending some time in China, and then coming back and noticing all the modified cars in the US. :)
And what of the lost sleep, the stress of their anti-social ways, on the rest of society. They sound like thugs.
I'd be interested in knowing the full story. Was it some kids kicking a ball around, or was it an organized match scheduled ahead of time on the playing field?
Where I used to live in Seattle, I knew that the grannies would come every week at a certain gym floor. Did they have a reservation? No, but I wasn't going to be an asshole and try to interrupt elderly women dancing and socializing.
(One could however criticize LA Fitness[1] for putting the dance floors and boxing bags in the same room!)
Now if they barged into a professional sports arena and tried to take over, hah, yeah, that's a problem! :)
[1] I actually have a number of criticisms of the old DT Bellevue LA Fitness but since they aren't there anymore, it doesn't much matter.
This is hysterics. Maybe if they interrupted every soccer game, there'd be something to worry about (then to think about, then to again stop worrying about.)
https://gizmodo.com/confessions-the-meanest-thing-gizmodo-di...
> Last year one group in Lanzhou city, Gansu, found a solution that make everyone happy by using bluetooth earphones, holding their own version of a silent disco.
I've researched, and even with several ESP32s its impossible. There are 79 frequency bands, and one would have to jam most of them. Talking about battery-operated device here, not a 1000W microwave.
Using Bluetooth chipsets aren't a great idea as they're optimized to think of it as 79 independent channels of which you need to select one. And on that, then try and send something of the standards and all the limitations involved in a normal device. Luckily, 2.4GHz WiFi runs on the exact same frequencies, its pretty easy to get your hands on 40MHz wide channel chips, and they don't have any real considerations as to the protocols and limitations of Bluetooth. Two hackable WiFi chipsets might be able to get you closer to abusing Bluetooth, you'll just want to set it to the wider 40MHz channels on each, ensure you set it to the Japanese frequencies or you'll miss the upper end of the Bluetooth bands, and then start sending out tons of junk at a higher than allowed power level. If you can somehow find something that lets you transmit on 80MHz wide 2.4GHz channels then you'd only need a single chipset to do it, but I'd imagine those would be exceptionally rare.
Note: as an amateur radio operator, RF enthusiast, and a fellow human being who likes his devices working, please don't break the rules.
Sadly, the device looks like an infrared TV-B-Gone. Prob won't work for us.
Someone should make an ANC pillow!
Serious note, the tech sounds interesting and I’m surprised it’s on the mainstream market now. I wonder if any side effects will be tied to if.
Only half-joking.
Not only am I skeptical of the technology but I’m skeptical there’s an actual problem here. On the surface it feels like a softball seat filler of an article.
The Guardian can fuck off.
Have you ever heard/felt a motorcycle going by while the operator flicked the throttle to cause the engine to backfire so loudly you felt it in your chest? Don't turn your head, if you look at them they'll think you think they're cool and they'll come back later so they can feel cool again. If you talk to them, they'll tell you loud pipes save lives, and when you point out that studies show that most motorcycle accidents occur due to vehicles in front of the bike, while the Doppler effect, modern cars' road noise deadening construction, and the bike's exhaust orientation direct most of the noise behind the bike, so they only serve to annoy pedestrians, they'll tell you they think they're cool.
Have you been sunbathing at the beach, risking falling asleep from the comfortable warmth of the sun, gentle rhythm of the waves, and the laughter of children playing, when someone brought a surprisingly loud Bluetooth speaker and decided that instead of those sounds you all needed to hear 90s party pop? On asking them, they might turn the music up, clearly what this beach needs is a little more NSYNC.
Have you been filling up your gas tank at a quiet gas station when a pickup truck rolled in with its windows down and country music coming over the radio, and the driver shut the engine off, opened the doors, and left the radio running so the entire assembled group of tired commuters, who were all clearly in need of some tunes, could listen together? Everyone loves country music, and those who don't, just need some exposure and then they'll like it.
I've only been to Shanghai once, and yes, the dancing grannies are a real thing that were present at a bunch of parks, but even in American national parks the same Red Guard generation of Chinese tourists are well known to be frequently rude.
This kind of behavior is rude. Put on some headphones, please, or at least turn down the volume: you shouldn't assume an exclusive right to the auditory experience of everyone at a public park.
The US' war on China means that anti-China sentiment is on the rise and that means dollar signs for publishers who are happy to toe the line.
Sounds like talking about a species of animals.
They play retro communist-nationalistic tunes, which Xi is bringing back to prominence, so complaints could be taken to be counterrevolutionary )these grannies harken back to Mao’s movements.