Hard Earned Silence

Guys working across the street.  I can’t think of a house or apartment I’ve ever lived in in China where sooner or later someone wasn’t gutting the next-door apartment, building a roof on a porch, redoing a floor. 

I came out of my place today and the workman was dropping iron bars from the second story, open window, down on to the driveway.  It was loud.  I stared.  He continued to drop them.  I restrained myself.  What do they know?  Is it really helpful to have the management come and tell them to be more quiet?

I can remember at my last place they had a rule that workers couldn’t do construction on Sundays.  So, of course, the guy right behind me began using a buzz saw at 9:00AM Sunday morning.  I called and complained.  The buzzing stopped.  Thirty minutes later it began again.  This was repeated three times or so, till I lost my cool with the guards and said, “if there is no enforcement, your role, your uniforms, are meaningless.”  Finally the workers, who were probably very keen to get yet another full days work in, reluctantly departed.  Sullen, I considered my hard earned silence. 

I rode home from the grocery store this evening and as I pulled up, five or so workers, who’d been shovelling sand through a filter, paused.  I didn’t see them pause.  I felt them pause.  New Yorkers know to look behind themselves, when they walk.  Foreigners in China have a dull, omnipresent hum of objectification.  And even after twenty-three years or so, it hovers about, irksome.  It takes more discipline than my sixty pushups in the morning demand, to not turn around and say something snarky.  No matter what I say, or how clearly I say it, I’ll elicit laughter for the novelty.  Disarmed I’ll want to befriend them and scold them and pout all at the same time and do none of them particularly well.  Next comes the realization, that I am committed to the next few minutes to uninspired, requisite banter, hand on the door handle, unable to turn it.  Rather, I ignore the attention, once again, head inside.