Phá làng phá xóm

In April, an elderly tenant (người thuê nhà) surnamed Wang, living in flat  (căn hộ) 702 of an apartment complex (chúng cư) in Shanghai’s Pudong area, was woken up at around 2 a.m. by a sound that went “tock, tock, tock.”

It was, she says, “Like someone knocking a wooden fish (a Buddhist percussion instrument = mõ) on the floor.” She counted ten knocks in all — but it was still ten fewer than the night before.

The noise didn’t end there. The flat 702 resident describes what followed as ear-piercing shrieks, chaotic radio static, and the sound of several people talking simultaneously — all echoing across her house at unbearably loud volumes. “It put so much strain on my heart I thought I’d die,” she said.

And it wasn’t the first time. The persistent din meant her octogenarian husband was often groggy (say lảo đảo, nghiêng ngả, không vững, chệnh choạng) from lack of sleep. On Aug. 24, 2018, he sat in the living room wide awake until dawn. When he finally stood up, he was overcome by a wave of dizziness and fell, fracturing four ribs. In a similar incident in May 2019, he fractured another rib.

For five years, the couple in flat 702, along with most other residents in this Shanghai apartment complex, have been overwhelmed by this relentless racket.

It began after an argument over water dripping into flat 502’s balcony from the floor above and quickly spiralled out of control. When talks reached an impasse, the residents in flat 502 turned to extreme measures: they deployed a “floor-shaker.”

Bài trước: Sa thải giảng viên vẫn là điều bình thường