Migraines

So I was thinking about migraines, and here is my conclusion. Chinese must be either immune to migraines or they must get the worst migraines ever. China kind of strikes me as a migraine breeding ground. China is probably as bad for migraines as Atlanta in springtime, with its deathly pollen counts, is for asthma.

For one thing, there’s the noise. Noise seems to be an integral part of Chinese society. Partly because there are millions of people in any given small area. Partly because everything just seems to be noisy. Noise is used for advertisement. The bicycle-cart guys who pass behind our apartments a dozen times a day bang on pots, clang bells, or chant into their loudspeakers to summon people out of their homes. The more “high-tech” ones may even play a loud, shrill tune, usually something inappropriate like “Happy Birthday” or “Jingle Bells.” If you pass by a clothing store while riding through town, the music blaring into the street is often loud enough to cease any attempts at conversation. This past weekend, the campus store (which is approximately 1000 feet from our apartments) was promoting some kind of items with hours of karaoke blasting over campus.

And of course living on a university campus is loud. The students pass just beneath our windows in masses from about 6:30am-11pm. Either our walls are really thin or they yell a lot. Probably both. One guy in the dormitory directly across from our apartments has decided to yell at the top of his lungs every night at 11pm when the lights are cut off in the dormitories. He does not realize that he is the object of many a malicious thought. And then there are the loudspeaker announcements and music three times a day. I had gotten so used to it I hardly even heard it anymore. Then they installed a new loudspeaker. 6:30am - 11:30am - 5:00pm. There’s no avoiding it.

People themselves are just loud. I’m still a little confused about the stereotype of the loud American and the reserved Chinese. Chinese restaurants are some of the loudest places I’ve been. People walk by or ride around on their bicycles singing loudly to themselves. Apparently at one time cell phone connections were very bad and people had to yell to be understood. The connections are fine now, but people still yell just out of principle. Coming back from class the other day on the teacher’s bus, I was getting a migraine. The bus driver was yelling, literally yelling, into his cell phone while laying on the horn and screeching the brakes. I was not very happy at that moment.

If the noise doesn’t get you, the MSG laden food probably will. Either that or unavoidable smoking. I don’t mean to sound horribly negative. I can’t say I’m exaggerating anything I said, but most of the time it doesn’t bother me too much. Fortunately, I don’t get too bad of migraines. And who knows, maybe living in China I will help me to build up a resistance to them. Maybe I’ll develop immunity too. For the moment, I’m just really grateful for the Excedrin reinforcements from my mom.

[Case in point: this morning, when I was needlessly awake at 5am, I heard a man ride by singing loudly. Seriously, who sings at five o’clock in the morning?]