house on the beach 1

Attack of the Dancing Grandmothers

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Life can be really silly. You find a magnificent house on the beach. The price is really reasonable. It is large and airy. It has an outstanding view facing the morning sunrise over the ocean. It is remodeled with new appliances, and everything. It is convenient with stores, shops and establishments within an easy stroll, and high-end “five star” luxury hotels on both sides. There’s only one catch.

Funny how the realtors failed to mention this…

Background

I have lived in China for some time now. When you decide to retire you can choose where to live. So, no longer is my residence dependent on where the work is. I can live where I want to live. If I wanted to live in Florida, I could move there. If I wanted to live in San Francisco I could move there. If I wanted to move to Bora Bora, I could move there.

You decide based on a host of factors. Price and affordability is one such factor. Standard and quality of life is another factor. For me, there has been a host of factors that I have had to take into account.  For me, based on my situation and ability, as well as my inherent MWI training, I have configured my life to retire in China on the Southern coast.

Yeah, it’s not for everyone because we all live individually in our own lives. In my situation, I have found this location to be the best location for me, at this time, in this reality.

Though it does have its issues…

Dancing Grandmothers

Dancing grandmothers 1
Dancing grandmothers typically take part in any open area. Typically it is a plaza or a parking lot. They will dance anywhere they feel like it.
“The line dancing craze has swept the nation over the past decade, with informal groups of primarily female retirees gathering at dusk and dawn to dance on any spare piece of pavement. Chinese media has estimated that up to 100 million people take part in the activities — known as “square dances,” for the public squares and plazas where many gatherings take place.

The loosely associated groups often have a leader who hauls out a boombox blaring pop hits and folk classics. The women work through a handful of dance routines, with grizzled veterans usually taking up positions at the front and beginners tentatively following along in the back rows.”

- Matt Sheehan

Now, the reader probably has no idea about what a “dancing grandmother “is, but don’t fret. Let me explain.

We moved to a new house. We loved the house, and made arrangements to move in. It took all day moving our goods from “up North” and we finally collapsed on the sofa around three o’clock in the afternoon. We had moved our goods in. The house was filled with boxes and furniture. It would most certainly be a few more days until we were all permanently moved in.

Our windows were all open, and we were enjoying the nice sea breeze as the house began to settle down at dusk.

At six o’clock it began…

The “dancing grandmothers” wearing their colorful uniforms gathered in the open area under our house. It was a public space, certainly, about the size of a basketball court. It sat on the grass under the palm trees that lay in a strip separating the ocean and beach from the road in front of our house.

A group of the grandmothers, aged between 50 and 90 pushed this huge set of speakers onto the plaza.

These speakers looked like they must have come from a Mick Jagger concert. They were huge! They sat upon a wheeled platform that looked like the back of a “flat-bed” truck with the cab and engine removed. About six grandmothers had to push it out from a car garage where they stored it.

Once they wheeled it out, and got it positioned so that the speakers faced my house (not the ocean), they then plugged it in the public electrical socket. Then one of the ladies put a four-hour mix tape in the player at the side of the platform. The mix-tape was worn from twice-daily use. The adjusted the volume.

They pressed “on”.

Dancing Grandmothers in the plaza.
The dancing grandmothers gather together in the local squares and plazas. They frequent the same place every day, two times a day. It is good and healthy social exercise for them. The only problem is the loud noise that accompanies it.

Suddenly, the entire house shook. It was like an earthquake.  We slammed all the windows shut, but it hardly made a difference. The windows rattled and shook. Every item in the house vibrated to the beat. The clothes on the hangers swung to the beat. The mirrors in the bathrooms vibrated in such a way that your image looked like it was pulsing in and out. The LED light bulbs flickered to the beat.

Our windows were shaking with each verse of "Ni she wo de xia ya shao ping guo". And in front of it had to be around 200 dancing grandmothers (obviously with hearing problems) going through their dance routines.

-My Dancing Grandmother Nightmare

It was horrible.

I lived in a house of stoned out crack-addict teenagers in Boston, and their parties were nothing like this. This was different. They only had a loud stereo. This was a rock concert outside my house. It was on a scale, about twenty times louder, and far more irritating.

The grandmothers were out there. They were all dancing to the memorized routines. They were all totally oblivious to the disturbance to the rest of the community around them. They moved and swayed to the songs. Songs that, after one year, I had completely memorized word for word. They never changed the mix-tape nor their routines.

Dancing Grandmothers in a plaza overlooking a town.
The dancing grandmothers often have uniforms that they would wear so that they feel that they are part of a community. It is so very China; unstructured with structure.

The problem was that they did this two times a day. They began in the morning. Five o’clock in the morning – that is, and played all morning until nine o’clock. And, then they repeated the procedure at six o’clock running until ten o’clock in the evening. Heck, do you (the reader) have any idea what this means? My entire waking moments while at home (outside of work) was poisoned by a rock concert.

We later discovered, to our dismay that the "dancing grandmothers" rocked out to the same tape at two times every single day.  Their dancing routine began at 5:00 am until 9:00am, and then they walked back home to sleep.  Then they returned and rocked out from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm. No wonder they were healthy.  Four hours in the morning and four hours in the evening.

Also, it was no wonder why they were hard of hearing.

-My Dancing Grandmother Nightmare

I would wake to the music. Brush my teeth to the music. I would dress to the music, eat breakfast to the music and leave work to the music. After I left the house, they would stop and the music would go off.

Then, I would return home from work. As I walked down the street, they would wheel out this huge set of speakers. By the time I entered my front door, they would turn it on. I would change, take a shower and eat dinner to the music. I would have to listen to the television wearing ear phones. I wouldn’t be able to rest until they finished up. Which gave me peace and quiet after ten o’clock in the evening. Just about the same time for me to turn in and get some sleep.

I live about 300 meters away from a nightly group of grannies 40-50 strong who crank the volume wayyyy up. I called the police once and they came, checked decibel level, it was 90. That requires ear protection in some circles.

Needless to say the cops couldn't make any money from this situation and promptly left. Grannies still blasting music 7:30-8:30 every night. I can't even see them, they are across street and down a ways about 5 minutes.

Ridiculous how people are rationalizing this phenomenon, it's outright noise pollution that can damage ears and cause stress for ALL residents. You can't deny this. Fuck them.

-Rampaging_Bunny

A number of times, the police came out to tell them to shut it off. Typically, I think they had the dial set at 80% on the amplifier, but sometimes, they had it set even higher. This would be totally unacceptable. It wasn’t just us who were irked, but all the tenants at the hotels to the left and right of our house were upset as well.

Hundreds of dancing grandmothers.
There are often multiple venues and places for the dancing grandmothers to dance. The group size can vary from just one or two up to thousands.

From what I gather, none of them gave any thoughts to their surroundings or how it would affect those in their communities. They were of the generation that were raised under Chairman Mao, and in their youth they were exposed to the “revolutionary fever” that loud music and dancing would provide. To us, they were like little children with no concept of anything other than what they wanted. The whole rest of the world could go to Hell as far as they were concerned.

Good luck with that. I honestly mean that, there's a nighty gathering directly below my balcony and I'm this close to resorting to water balloons.

There are so many groups in any given city and the problem is that they turn the music too loud. Just set a legal decibel limit, and most importantly start enforcing it!, and all is fine.

-Icouldshitallday

Links

Some links

“It's in your face, in your ears, in fact, right bang in your home. One man bouncing his infant daughter says he fears the first words she will speak are the saccharine lyrics that waft in daily through the walls and windows. Another worries about the health of his pregnant wife, who says she is just unable to rest due to the constant blare of The Beautiful Rainbow Fills My Heart.

Stand amidst the Dancing Grannies and you know that however you measure it, you are mired in what is no doubt a public nuisance. But exactly how many decibels and what one should measure it with remains unclear. The absence of clarity means no authority can intervene with a legitimate penalty.

Regulations also designate authorities responsible for specific misdemeanors in specific areas. But when push comes to shove, no authority is prepared to get heavy-handed with a bunch of retirees who are just out to have a good time in the only way they say is available to them.

It's a different story unofficially. Wuhan residents made headlines in the last few months after they showered feces on a group of boisterous Dancing Grannies. Just weeks ago, a man in Beijing unleashed three Tibetan Mastiffs before firing a rifle into the air.”

-China Blog: Dancing Grannies raise a ruckus
A small group of dancing grandmothers.
The dancing grandmothers always perform choreographed dance routines to structured music. This requires a music player or sound box.

What I Did About It

Whether it's waltzing, line-dancing, rock n' roll style jigging, or just free-style bumping and grinding, the dancers have at least two things in common: no one is usually aged much below 45, and the music is loud enough to blow out an eardrum. They are called the Dancing Grannies. And their passion is for the Guang Chang Wu, roughly translated as Public Square Dance.

-China Blog: Dancing Grannies raise a ruckus

There is an old American saying that “You can’t fight City Hall”, which is directed against the government, but can be applied to any large problem larger than an individual to handle. For me, as a foreigner, there was little I could do.

We thought about our options. We could break out of our housing contract and lose three months rent, or we would endure the pain and plan an escape. We opted for the cheapest option. We endured and planned. By the time the lease was up we knew what to do and wasted no time at all moving out.

Macao-zhuhai-Hong Kong bridge map
Where I live is smack dab in between Macao and Hong Kong. There is ocean everywhere and it is really very easy to find a house on the beach or the coast. They are everywhere. Since both Macao and Hong Kong are geographically small, the reader can consider that I live in a “near” suburb of Hong Kong for all practical purposes.

I lived out the housing contract and moved. I moved down ocean. My new house was larger, bigger, and most importantly, quieter. I made sure that there were no dancing grandmothers anywhere around my place. Today, I live on “Billionaires’ Street”, which is an upscale community on the ocean. No grandmother would even dare to upset anyone on this street. They might run over them in their Bentley’s or Ferrari’s, or even hire someone to “take care of the problem”.

House in Zhuhai China.
China affords a great lifestyle at the fraction of the cost compared to a comparable place in the United States. This view would be easily millions of dollars in America. Of course, there are sacrifices. You cannot get a thin-crust pepperoni pizza at Pizza Hut, or a bagel with creme cheese. These are the terrible prices that you must sometimes pay.

Life in China is quite different than that in the United States. It is a different culture, and a different lifestyle set of expectations. Indeed, there is “Rich” and then there is “China Rich”.

None of these gals dared set foot int this neighborhood. It’s peaceful and quiet. It is well-policed by local and private police. The entire area is under constant surveillance and it would be very difficult to roll a huge set of speakers down the road to the public park areas.

Two Years Later

Zhuhai opera house.
Opera House complex in Zhuhai, China. At night it glows in a movie of different colors. It is very beautiful.
The first few months of running across them I'm sure my reaction was pretty typical... aw, isn't that great, those little old ladies socialize and stay active together.

There is a dancing square near my work and I gotta listen to that shit blaring every night. Now, it's not too bad for me because I am far away, but the fact that they play the music so damn loud that it can be heard 3 blocks away, just shows how damn selfish they are about it.

-Hopfrogg

Beijing has since make rules and guidelines for public dancing. It is not forbidden, but the guidelines are certainly enforced. Music must NOT be loud. The times for when you can occupy a public space to do this kind of dancing is restricted. Violators are punished severely by the “Corruption Police“, if the local police is unable to handle the situation.

As a result, things have settled down considerably.

Today, at my old house there are absolutely NO dancing grandmothers anywhere near that plaza. Every morning and evening it is a quiet and peaceful spot with couples walking up and down the boardwalk arm in arm. Dogs play with balls in the park, and adults fly kites over the ocean. It is really nice.

The dancing grandmothers moved to plazas in front of a number of mall areas. However, they are not permitted to wheel any “Rock Concert” sized speakers. They are permitted to have a small “boom box” with a strict enforcement of the rule of law. In China, ignorance of the law is not an excuse. If you are even suspected of violating the noise limits, the police would take your music machine, and you will NEVER get it back.

So, today, when you drive past these dancing grandmothers, you can’t hear anything.  You can see them dancing, which is fine. You can see that they are exercising and being sociable. That is just great. They are doing so without disturbing the peace of everyone else. It is a good thing and everyone benefits.

Zhuahi Opera house at night.
Zhuhai Opera house is much like the Carrier dome in Syracuse, NY in that it is lit up at night and makes a real nice impression.

If this was the United States, the issue would still be under study by a “Blue Ribbon Panel”, and then millions of dollars would be poured into their solutions, and still the problem would not be resolved. It would only change form. Ah, you’ve got to love China.

The Lesson(s) and the Take Aways

  • Before you lay any money down, you sure as heck better make sure that there are not any “surprises”.
  • If the prices sounds too good to be true, maybe it is.
  • When the Chinese confront a problem they attempt to solve it. They do not try to use it as a “political football” to obtain some kind of political advantage.
  • In China, the grandmothers really love to dance.
  • The SJW’s during the 1966 Cultural Revolution are now grandparents.  They believe that the behaviors they were got away with during their youth would still be tolerated by modern Chinese society. They are wrong.
  • People behave differently when they are part of a large mob.
  • Chinese grandmothers like to dance, if you want to join them you can.

FAQ

Q: What are “Dancing Grandmothers”?
A: This is a phenomenon that describes  what grandmothers do in China. They organize as a dancing troupe. They come in different sizes and shapes, but for the most part there are two things that they have in common. Firstly, they are all older than 45 years of age, and secondly they play the music super loud.

Q: Why is the music played loudly?
A: I personally think that constant exposure to loud music damages your hearing. I just think many of them can’t tell that it is too loud. However, others follow the belief that they are following the superstition that loud noise chases away bad spirits and bad luck.

Q: Why do they dance?
A: Dancing is fun. They get exercise and they get to spend time with their friends.

Q: Why can’t you just let them dance? They aren’t bothering anyone.
A: They are very loud and they do bother people nearby. In America you hear about people complaining about living near a bar that gets rowdy at times. This is a group of gals with a mobile “Rock Concert” that sets up in your front yard. They aim the speakers at YOUR house and wake you up at five in the morning, and play all evening.

Q: When did the dancing grandmothers start this activity?
A: They have been doing this for years. However, during the last few years they have been getting loud about it. Previously they would use a singular CD player or cassette player for their music. However, with the advent of cheap electronics, they have been able to purchase enormous sound machines. This has enabled many of them to have very loud mini-sized “Rock Concerts”. As such, they have become a nuisance to everyone around them.

Q: Are the Dancing Grandmothers organized?
A: Yes, they are. Typically, in China, when a group of people get together there is always someone who take a lead role. It is a natural progression of events when ever a group of Chinese gathers together. In the case of the dancing grandmothers, a person always takes the lead and organizes the events. If they are out for some reason or the other, there will always be someone else who will automatically take their place.

Links about China

Business KTV

Dance Craze

End of the Day Potato

Dog Shit

Dancing Grandmothers

When the SJW movement took control of China

Family Meal

Freedom & Liberty in China

Ben Ming Nian

Beware the Expat

Fake Wine

Fat China

Chinese apartment houses

China and America Comparisons

SJW
Playground Comparisons
The Last Straw
Diversity Initatives
Democracy
Travel outside
10 Misconceptions about China
Top Ten Misconceptions

Learning About China

Pretty Girls 1
Pretty Girls 2
Pretty Girls 3
Pretty Girls 4
Pretty Girls 5

Articles & Links

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

Notes

  1. Composed, and edited 31MAY18.
  2. SEO review 31MAY18.
  3. Internet release 31MAY18.

Links about China

Popular Music of China
End of the Day Potato
Dog Shit
Dancing Grandmothers
Dance Craze
When the SJW movement took control of China
Family Meal
Freedom & Liberty in China
Ben Ming Nian
Beware the Expat
Fake Wine
Fat China
Business KTV
Chinese apartment houses
Chinese Culture Snapshots
Rural China
Chinese New Year

China and America Comparisons

SJW
Playground Comparisons
The Last Straw
Leaving the USA
Diversity Initatives
Democracy
Travel outside
10 Misconceptions about China
Top Ten Misconceptions

The Chinese Business KTV Experience

This is the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal press. This is the reality. Read or not.

KTV1
KTV2
KTV3
KTV4
KTV5
KTV6
KTV7
KTV8
KTV9
KTV10
KTV11
KTV12
KTV13
KTV14
KTV15
KTV16
KTV17
KTV18
KTV19
KTV20

Learning About China

Pretty Girls 1
Pretty Girls 2
Pretty Girls 3
Pretty Girls 4
Pretty Girls 5

Contemporaneous Chinese Music

This is a series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and enjoyment.

Part 1 - Popular Music of China
Part 3 -Popular music of China.
Part 3 - The contemporaneous music of China.
part 3B - The contemporaneous music of China.
Part 4 - The contemporaneous popular music of China.
Part 5 - The contemporaneous music of China.
Part 5B - The popular music of China.
Part 5C - The music of contemporary China.
Part D - The popular music of China.
Part 5E - A happy Joe.
Part 5F - The contemporaneous music of China.
Part 5F - The popular music of China.
Post 6 - The contemporaneous music of China.
Post 7 - The contemporaneous music of China.
Post 8 - The contemporaneous music of China.
Part 9 - The contemporaneous music of China.
Part 10 - Music of China.
Post 11 - The contemporaneous music of China.

Articles & Links

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.
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