There is a saying in China: What can wake you up in the morning? Those with creative tendencies often say a dream. It seems like a joke but that's what encourages us. If that's too romantic, yes, an alarm clock works its magic for most people.
However, it is neither a dream nor an alarm clock that wakes me up in Bangkok. It is noise. The apartment next door is renovating, and the sound of construction starting between 7.30-8am every morning works better than an alarm clock. Sometimes it is the sound of electric drilling, sometimes the sound of hammering.
Workday or weekend, rain or shine, the noise is with us all day. Thanks to that, I cannot even take a little nap on the weekend. I am really upset and puzzled as to why nobody would remind the construction workers to leave a moment for us at rest time.
I gradually adapted to the noise a few weeks after it began. If I don't hear it one day, I will wonder why it has stopped and wait anxiously for it to start again, usually while I'm taking a nap.
In China, we have a law that prohibits building renovations and interior decorations at noon, and between 6pm-8am in residential areas. While the law helps subdue noise from building renovations, it doesn't do much for construction noise.
I had to deal with noise problems when I lived in Beijing, too. My apartment was located near a major street. Besides traffic noise, construction of a new subway line was underway. Noise assaulted me day and night. Because there is a rule prohibiting trucks from coming downtown between 6am-12pm, it was after midnight when the trucks transporting construction materials rumbled through my neighbourhood.
The noise usually started when I planned to sleep. Even though there were policies that forbid construction projects from making loud noise at night, the workers still loaded and unloaded materials unceremoniously, not sparing a second thought for nearby residents.
Faced with this situation you can choose to alert police or complain to the China's Ministry of Environmental Protection, but it often to no avail. Most of the time they say they will try to solve the problem, but in order to improve our living standards, it is necessary to improve infrastructure and repair old buildings construction noise is inevitable.
In China's Guangdong province last year, a resident shot a construction worker who made too much noise. Construction workers stopped night-time construction and tried to reduce noise for a short time after. But as time went on, everything went back to normal.
Upon an internet search, I found similar cases have occurred in many countries. It makes me think the public and government often pay more attention to water and air pollution, but ignore noise pollution, which also affects our physical and mental health at least that's the case in Beijing and Bangkok.
With the development of machines, noise has also increased greatly in the 20th century. We live surrounded by loud planes, trucks and electronic tools.
Noise pollution can cause just as many damaging effects on people's health as other forms of pollution. Exposure to excessive noise can cause hearing loss, stress, lack of sleep, irritability, indigestion, heartburn, high blood pressure and ulcers.
Many people suffer from the effects of noise pollution in the city. It may not directly lead to an accident, but it will influence our long-term health. Because sound disappears, it is hard to prove we have suffered when we complain about noise.
We need to be more serious and active when faced with noise pollution. We should come up with ways to protect ourselves, such as locating residential buildings as far from noise sources as possible, banning the honking of car horns in certain areas and planting more trees in front of buildings to absorb sound. It's important that we raise social awareness to curb this problem and voice our concerns to authorities so they can take action. Speaking of, the noise is still around me from next door. I can only pray to live in a silent world. There's always tomorrow.
Cui Yuchen is a Chinese journalist based in Bangkok on the FK exchange programme.