Little victories

Perhaps too little to be worthy of report.

I fear the battle will have to be re-fought tonight - and every night, for who knows how long.

And last night's success was relatively small, perhaps even illusory.

I've spent a few nights away from home this week; and all the nights I have slept here, I've been returning so late (and exhausted and drunk) that I have been able to sleep through anything. And I think it's only in the last few days that the building site next to my apartment has added a huge mechanical digger (and an attendant fleet of tipper trucks which enter or leave the site every few minutes throughout the night, via a gate situated directly below my bedroom window) to its armoury of noise nuisance.

I was concerned that last night was going to be a problem, but I wasn't quite sure what the curfew time after which I could legitimately complain about the noise was; and I was foolishly optimistic that they would desist by..... 11pm..... midnight...... No. Shortly after midnight, I was at my wit's end. But I feared it was too late to impose on any of my Chinese friends; and the few foreign-friends-who-speak-good-Chinese I tried turning to were all rather obtusely unhelpful. In desperation, I resorted to Chinese directory enquiries - who told me that there was no English-language contact number for the police here (I can't believe this - but even to be told it is pretty alarming!). They did however give me a couple of other numbers to try: an 'emergency services' number (who told me it was not a 'police matter', but who I eventually harangued into promising to try to get someone to visit the site for me and shut it down as soon as possible) and a 'government information hotline' (who seemed to be representing that they were the appropriate channel for registering such complaints, but didn't seem to be capable of actually doing anything about the problem - not until the following working day, at least).

I wasn't really expecting anything to come of either of these efforts. But..... an hour or so later (just as I was finally nodding off to sleep - on the less-than-perfectly comfortable sofa in my slightly better sound-insulated living-room, with the aid of cotton wool earplugs and a HUGE slug of whisky), I got a telephone call. It was all high-speed gibbering in Chinese, and I followed less than a tenth of it; but it did seem that they were responding to my complaint, and promising to do - or to have already done - something about the noise problem. It also seemed likely to me that they were the police, or that the police had become involved at some stage in the process, because they used my 'Chinese name' (which I had not given to either of the helpline girls I'd spoken to, but which the local police know through my residence registration).

I still wasn't sanguine, but the noise did suddenly drop off quite a bit. The digger continued to operate for another half hour or so; and the trucks taking away its diggings were still rumbling to and fro for some time after that. In fact, I don't think work on the site ever stopped completely (there was some motor chugging away constantly at the far end; perhaps it is a drainage pump they can't switch off), but the worst of the noise had subsided enough for me to sleep by around 3am.

Of course, it started up again by 6 or 7am, so I am not at all well-rested today.

I had extensive discussions with a Chinese lawyer friend this afternoon about what might be done to prevent further recurrences of the all-night working. I wasn't too happy with her answers! (Apparently the prohibition on nighttime construction runs from 10pm until 6am; but it is just about impossible to obtain any effective enforcement from the 'relevant authorities'.)

There was a significant lull in the work on the site today. I fear, however, that this is just a temporary improvement in my aural environment. Indeed, it makes me suspect that perhaps last night's intermission was mere coincidence rather than the result of a heroic intervention by the powers-that-be.

By late morning, things were quiet enough to tempt me to try going back to bed. But, to add insult to injury, the apartment downstairs has been undergoing major remodelling yesterday and today. I can't see how there is enough scope for redecoration in apartments like this to keep a power-drill continuously employed for two whole days, but they managed it. I was so utterly exhausted by this stage that I managed to sleep through it anyway: I crashed out for 4 hours this afternoon.

It was not particularly deep or restful sleep, as you might imagine. I was plagued by oddly cinematic dreams: an Evil Villain's staccato laugh after he revealed his plans (Gary Oldman in the role, of course); then, someone running with heavy footsteps up an enormous stone staircase (in fact, alternating flights of steps seemed to have very high or very low risers, so the man would ascend a series of low steps improbably swiftly, but then move much more slowly and ponderously up the succeeding flight of high steps - there were many such regularly alternating rhythms in these dreams); a procession of alien pachyderms trudging, thud-thud-thud, around an arena far below; and, insinuating itself into each scene or into the gaps between them, a fast, deep, neverending drum-roll.

It is no surprise that I am mad, mad, MAD today. If those bastard tipper trucks reappear tonight, I fear blood will be spilled.