In Search of Silence (chapter 1)

As I read through Gordon Hempton’s book One Square Inch of Silence, my longing for silence grew stronger and stronger. I have talked about this in my last blog “recording where I live in sounds”, but I’ll continue to talk more as my quest for silence has just started.

For people who are not familiar with what is silence, Gordon defined it as natural soundscape undisturbed by human noises. It is spiritually cleansing to be immersed in the silence of nature. Noises from traffic, machines and power stations, etc reminds us constantly about the problems in the world—climate change, humanitarian crisis, pressures from work … And to be free from these noises, and to be immersed in the soundscape purely made by birds, trees, winds, insects, rivers…means to reconnect with the earth, the lifestyle of our ancestors, to come closer to our conscience, and to find our place in the world as human.

I’ve lived in a noisy city, Wuhan. The closest experience to silence might be a few country walks I took in UK and the three months of lockdown during COVID19 pandemic outbreak. I remember the birds were incredibly lousy, and when the lockdown was lifted, people went out of homes to work, they found animals made nets in their cars, their workspaces, dormitories at school. It was incredible how quick nature came back when we stopped our life for a few months. Yet soon after the pandemic, things have gone back to normal. The construction sites have been chiming 24 hours. For 11 years since I moved to this beautiful community, construction work never stopped! Sometimes these noises blend into my nightmares. I know very well that sleeping in noisy conditions can bring up a series of health issues. But no decision makers seems to be aware of the problem of noise. But this is not unusual, around the world, as long as you are in the city, you more or less would encounter construction noise every now and then. Why are there so many constructions? People say it is construction, but from the sound of it, it is more like destruction. You dig up the road, you push down the buildings, you destroy what’s there in the excuse of something better will be made possible in the future. But really, the cities have been destructing itself for decades, and seldom stay with what it is. Noise isn’t just a transition to something better, it is the norm itself.

So, to search for silence, I have to go far away. I don’t have a lot of chance to travel, but I did manage to give myself a break in March and travelled to a small town in Hainan, the tropical island in south of China. I went there to plant mangrove trees. The site where we plant the trees is breathtakingly beautiful in the picture, no one would have imagined the constant chime of the fish farm in the background.

(photo of me planting trees)

As we were staying in a small town, it was relatively quieter than most places I’ve been (but still there were noises such as air conditioners or motor bikes). One morning we got up extra early to plant trees before sun rose too high. I haven’t woken up that early for years… But it came with a surprise, I encountered the “musical of dawn”. The sound of the world waking up gradually was impressive, at first you could only hear a few birds breaking out the quietness, but every few minutes, a new bird song joins in, adding yet another layer to the chorus, all the way building up to the beginning of a day. Of course, the human sounds are joining as well.

(My finger made some of the noises as I wasn’t familiar with how to use the equipment then)

I did manage to find a place to experience silence though—we met an enthusiastic local who led us to a reservoir that was rarely visited. There was a long lane between the trees and when the wind blew across the branches, the trees were like whispering to each other. Sometimes when there were no other people passing through silence was so palpable in the air. I closed my eyes and listened with my whole being. I could trace the wind with my ears, how it built up, how it travels from one end to another, how it came back again… I was enchanted. At that time I still hadn’t got my zoom h2n recorder, so I just used my phone, which produces terrible recordings. And I don’t want to share it here because of the quality so to not give people a bad impression of silence.

I didn’t know that was the closest time I got to silence…There were many places where I thought I could find silence but ended up utterly defeated. I went to Yalong Bay Tropic Paradise Forest Park, the name sounded really promising. I went into the woods, no other people were there, I was the only person climbing the mountain. But as I was about to take the recorder out of my heavy bag, a searing high pitched shrieking sound came from above and cut through the sky. It was the cable way, zigzag through the space over the whole side of mountain, the sound was nonstop, a nightmare for anyone in search of natural peace.

Then, a week later, when I was rehearsing a clown show with a friend in Yangjiang, a small city in Guangzhou. I thought I would find silence again. I saw the road to the lake was blocked from 7pm everyday. People could only walk in that area. That means no traffic noise, my heart was racing as I went deeper into the fields. But as I listened through my zoom recorder, the traffic from another road that’s about 1.5 kilometres away, and some kind of constant hum from maybe a power plant across the field were obvious. I took off my headphones, I realised that they just didn’t came to my conscious before I listened through the recorder…

I rode a bike to another park in that city a week later with my recorders. Although I couldn’t hear the traffic that time, annoyingly, some kind of construction (destruction) work was going on…It rained that day, so I recorded the rain sound, which was for me delicious! Except that the screw driver’s noise came in shortly after a few minutes…

Sometimes I feel defeated when I thought I’d find silence and it wasn’t there. Other times I just gave up completely… But the search of silence and the recording experience really make me understand how Gordon feels. When I read his book, I had this constant doubt in my mind, “is noise such a big deal?” “if I don’t pay attention to it, I won’t be so bothered.” But only when I started to search for the precious silence did I come to realise how disheartening and almost depressing it is to be unable to find it anywhere, and the weight of the possibility that it might have completely disappeared from a culture, perhaps permanently in our future…

Lastly, I’d like to share this recording I made by the road in the evening of Haitang, Hainan. I was impressed by the chorus of the insects, however every now and then it was overwhelmed by the cars driving past. I’d like to share this recording because you can hear the contrast between the two kinds of sounds, the power dynamic, and how different they make you feel. Perhaps, through the gaps between noises, we can take a glimpse of silence and feel what we’ve lost.