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Q: Chinese people and volume control.
The Chinese don't understand volume control - whether it's coming from a speaker or their own mouths. A woman came into our office to talk to one of the guys here and they prattled on for what felt like hours. I responded by blasting hair metal.
How do you handle noisy Chinese people?
I often inform my students or other staff members about the difference between "inside voices" and "outside voices". When we are inside and someone is close to us we use our inside voice. Our inside voice is only just loud enough for the people next to us to hear it, hence why we use it inside. Our outside voice is the voice we use when we are outside and the person we are communicating with is some distance away or we are straining to make ourselves heard over the din of roadworks, traffic or some shop blasting out Xiao Pingguo. I then give examples. I politely enquire in my softest tone "Hello. How are you?" and then I scream into their face "HELLO! HOW ARE YOU!" After that I ask if they noticed the difference.
I just avoid the places where this specific kind of folks tend to gather.
For places like home, since even "high standard" residences won't guarantee a peasant-free environment anymore, I enforce my peace with ballistic measures.
You can't ask everyone to shut-up. You have to adapt around that. I carefully avoid noisy situations
* I've my own office, with a door that can close
* If I want to go for a stroll, I know the places without much noise
* I avoid eating in a small room with a lots of people
* I got eating 30 minutes after most people go eating.
* I tend to take city bike over buses
* I live in sparsely populated place, by China's standard
* The building I'm living in is a ghetto. Not my choice at all, but it have *that* perk.
A quick and long lasting trip to the loos is all you need.
If they quiz you on your long dunny spells, tell them it must be the food they serve you.
I often inform my students or other staff members about the difference between "inside voices" and "outside voices". When we are inside and someone is close to us we use our inside voice. Our inside voice is only just loud enough for the people next to us to hear it, hence why we use it inside. Our outside voice is the voice we use when we are outside and the person we are communicating with is some distance away or we are straining to make ourselves heard over the din of roadworks, traffic or some shop blasting out Xiao Pingguo. I then give examples. I politely enquire in my softest tone "Hello. How are you?" and then I scream into their face "HELLO! HOW ARE YOU!" After that I ask if they noticed the difference.
Well, as an American, I often get called the loud American. I would say that Americans tend to talk louder than most of the people from Europe, so I feel bad saying anybody is loud. That said, the Chinese seem to LIKE background noise. They don't really go for the whole quite, zen like atmosphere of sitting on a mountain du fu taoist style.
next time your in a class, ask the students to turn up the volume on the computer and play the audio louder, most of them dont know the work "volume" or "audio", try to get them to use the words in a sentence if you want a reason to hang yourself.
Most Chinese come from farming backgrounds. They had to scream at each other on the fields to get things done. The same people scream into their mobile phones because again they think they should talk loud because the person is far away...
It is quite amusing to see an obvious farmer screaming into their iPhone so loud that they may as well just broadcast their conversation to everyone for feedback.
I wish my wife stop shouting at home. She says it is her normal "serious voice" but I really hate it more and more, because that's something crazy ... as any other chinese guess
RobRocks:
maybe she shouts because she could be going deaf(not a joke)
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http://youthsalary.com/?user=12576
Nessquick:
in fact, she is deaf on right ear. but that's not that reason. she can talk pretty normal and nice way, things go worse when something is not right in her view. she can't control it. she is able to shout, i mean shout, to our sons ear from within 20cm, just let he follow her order, while dressing him for example. when I tell her, please stop this, it get even worse ...
It comes from the farmer's background, people who are more educated or whose families have been living in the city for generations tend to be more quiet, but they are maybe 10% of the whole population.
Nowadays most big coastal cities have more migrant workers than local people. Those migrants come straight from fourth tier shitholes or rural areas.
Recently I befriended a girl from the Chongqing countryside living in Foshan, she is hot and very friendly/warm but so loud and she seems to say whatever comes to her mind before thinking about it, it's alright with me since she calls me hot and handsome all the time, but it can hurt other people when she calls them fat or ugly. She does it less often (at least in my presence) since I told her it's rude and only uneducated farmers do so. I have hope, I can't educate a billion people, but I can make some of them better.
gouxiong:
I guess your new Chongqing girlfriend is not direct because she is from countryside but more probably because she is from Chongqing. I lived there for some time and the people are very straight forward. In Chongqing like means like and do not like means do not like. You can rarely see Chongqing person to be too 'diplomatic' .
I personally like it even though sometimes I would prefer to be confronted with certain facts in more subtle way ...
DrMonkey:
It's a Sichuan thing, I felt people there have very little filtering going-on when they speak : they say what goes on in their mind as-is, raw. It's refreshing but it can hurts too.
They are the loudest people I have ever spent time around by far. I have always wondered about it the why of it too. I have told no small number of them to pipe down. I posted a story on here a couple of years ago where I went over to one young fella in a restaurant and asked him if he thought it would be a good idea if I smashed his head through the table. I got the typical 'dear in headlights' look that is common for the chinamale.
people don't like to hear my explanation, but I'll say it anyway. They are fkn savages.
I do not think the reason for majority of Chinese, including those educated ones, is that they had shout at each other in the fields.
I am far away from creating any 'scientific' theory but I assume there can be two reasons for that.
One reason could be the ever present background noise day and night in all bigger cities. I assume that in China the common background noise on the streets does not drop under 70 dB (busy streets then heavily exceeding 85-90 dB) so as long as you want to communicate with someone so you need speak louder than this. After a while it develops into a habit.
The other reason can be that from childhood the Chinese grow up in big groups (easily reaching 100 persons in a class). In such a crowded and first of all competitive environment you will probably develop a habit of speaking loud.
Generally I do not have a big problem with it and simply accept it as it is.
I think that most of the people are coming from farming fields where they have traditionally had to scream at each other every day to get their point across from the cucumber patch to the squash patch. My vegetable-ology isn't quite right for this hemisphere, but you get the idea.
