When I owned a country inn, in the 1990’s, in the Delaware Valley, the police would show up exactly at10 PM, every time we had an outdoor wedding.  According to our contracts, no music was allowed at such events after 9:30 because we knew that there was a noise regulation for the township, and we knew that we had jealous neighbors, but the police would show up anyway (little people always are so predictable).

Here, in China, there seems to be no similar regulations about noise.  When I lived in my last apartment, down the avenue several blocks from our current location, the noise from the disco, eight floors beneath my apartment, on a sub-basement floor, would regularly keep me awake, on weekends.  Once, when the street was in need of repair, there were jackhammers going through day and night for several days.  At the college where I teach, it is normal for construction activity on new buildings to continue through the night (even when students are studying for exams).  In our new apartment, we are near the railroad tracks, and they work on the tracks, regularly, after midnight until the break of dawn, day after day after day.