I Keep Thinking You Can’t Turn Sound Off

00:01 Sound has always

00:03 played an important role in my world.

00:07 First, we speak every day.

00:11 And every day, we may also

00:13 listen to some kind of audio,

00:15 whether music or podcasts,

00:16 or, for example,

00:18 the films and shows we watch,

00:23 among other things.

00:25 I've always felt

00:27 that sound,

00:29 when used well,

00:30 can be incredibly interesting.

00:32 And there are

00:33 countless examples of that.

00:36 But I started wondering:

00:38 sound itself—

00:39 Why is it so special?

00:42 I realized that

00:44 of all our five senses,

00:47 sound is the only one

00:49 we cannot switch off.

00:52 I mean,

00:53 even deaf people

00:57 may still be able to hear

00:59 sounds inside their own bodies.

01:01 For example,

01:02 those of us who can hear through our ears

01:06 can cover them

01:08 and still sense

01:10 hearing—

01:12 no,

01:13 sound happening inside our bodies.

01:17 I use sound as a starting point

01:20 to think of other things.

01:23 For example,

01:27 I wonder why

01:30 I find Japanese and Korean so beautiful.

01:35 How beautiful they sound—

01:37 I don't know how to describe it.

01:38 I'm inexplicably drawn to them.

01:41 I also find Cantonese and Hokkien

01:45 sound beautiful.

01:46 Compared with other languages,

01:49 Mandarin

01:50 doesn't evoke much in me.

01:53 And then,

01:54 there's the sound of Vietnamese,

01:58 which I don't particularly like.

02:02 I find that strange.

02:04 Why is that?

02:06 Another example

02:07 comes from listening to podcasts.

02:10 Some podcasts

02:14 have very shrill voices.

02:17 When a voice is that sharp,

02:20 however much information it contains,

02:24 I simply can't

02:26 finish the episode.

02:27 The voice becomes so piercing

02:29 that I can't bear it.

02:31 Other podcasts, though,

02:34 have voices

02:34 that sound incredibly soothing.

02:37 Even if the speaker isn't very articulate,

02:42 to my ears,

02:43 if the voice is nice,

02:44 I can keep listening.

02:47 People who don't know me may not realize

02:50 that I have

02:51 very high standards for how people speak.

02:54 If someone,

02:56 no matter how accomplished,

02:59 isn't articulate to my ears,

03:02 inside,

03:02 my opinion of them drops dramatically.

03:07 I'm someone who—

03:11 I don't know why—

03:12 has high standards for how people speak.

03:16 Okay, moving on.

03:17 Sound also makes me think

03:18 about things like this:

03:21 in our country,

03:23 I don't know whether

03:26 noise pollution is considered severe,

03:28 but the subway is certainly very loud.

03:33 I mean,

03:34 when I'm at home,

03:36 the volume for music

03:38 can be just one notch on an Apple device.

03:43 But on the subway,

03:44 I may need it almost at full volume.

03:48 At home,

03:50 that volume would blow out my ears.

03:54 But on the subway,

03:56 on the subway,

03:58 my headphones don't even warn me

03:59 that the volume may damage my hearing.

04:03 So I wonder,

04:04 why is that?

04:07 And then,

04:09 the first time I visited Thailand,

04:11 I noticed that the motorbikes

04:14 on the streets were incredibly loud.

04:18 Even indoors with the door shut,

04:20 you could hear them rumbling outside.

04:23 I remember thinking, my God,

04:25 why is this country so loud?

04:29 Does that mean

04:31 people in Thailand

04:33 are more or less sensitive to sound

04:37 than people in mainland China?

04:42 Which would it be—higher or lower?

04:44 I mean, they seem more able

04:47 to tolerate noisy environments

04:50 and remain in them.

04:53 Sound also makes me think

04:55 about prenatal education.

04:59 I've seen news stories

05:02 where people claim

05:04 it benefits a fetus in the womb.

05:09 And I found that strange.

05:11 Can a fetus really

05:13 hear sounds outside the womb?

05:17 I haven't researched it,

05:19 but I assume there's scientific evidence.

05:22 Some

05:25 pregnant women

05:27 may regularly

05:30 talk to the babies in their wombs,

05:33 tell them stories,

05:37 or simply talk to themselves,

05:39 treating the baby as already present.

05:42 Perhaps when a fetus hears its mother

05:45 speaking that way,

05:47 it feels safe,

05:48 or feels something else.

05:50 We often see

05:52 that after birth, a baby

05:53 has a deeper bond with its mother,

05:56 especially if the mother,

05:58 before the baby was born,

05:59 communicated

06:01 with it often.

06:04 Another practice

06:06 before birth

06:09 is playing music by certain musicians

06:13 to cultivate the baby's musicality

06:16 or something.

06:18 Oh

06:18 I don't really know.

06:19 I find prenatal education fascinating.

06:23 A while ago, I looked into it

06:25 and found an experiment.

06:27 A pregnant woman

06:30 was sent—

06:32 or asked—to live near an airport.

06:35 We all know

06:35 how loud airports can be.

06:38 The baby lived near the airport

06:41 before it was born,

06:42 while it was still

06:44 inside its mother's womb,

06:45 for a long time.

06:47 After the baby was born,

06:50 its tolerance for that noise

06:52 was quite high.

06:55 Or,

06:58 how should I put it?

07:00 With loud noise,

07:01 after being born,

07:03 the baby felt better in loud places

07:07 than babies

07:09 whose environment in the womb

07:13 had been very quiet.

07:16 After birth,

07:18 they couldn't tolerate a noisier world.

07:23 But babies who had lived

07:26 near airports

07:27 before being born

07:29 could tolerate a much noisier world.

07:33 That was the comparison.

07:35 I found it fascinating.

07:37 Perhaps a fetus that spends

07:39 a long time in a noisy environment

07:43 adapts to it.

07:44 It comes to feel

07:46 the place was safe,

07:47 because it spent so long there

07:49 inside its mother's womb.

07:50 So after entering the world,

07:53 when it encounters loud places again,

07:55 it may feel

07:57 they're not so different from the world

08:00 it knew inside the womb.

08:02 And I thought,

08:03 that's truly fascinating.

08:05 I started with sound,

08:11 and it led me to so many other things.

08:15 Behind all of this,

08:17 although I can't yet

08:19 dig out

08:21 everything involved,

08:24 I think researching it

08:28 would be fascinating.

08:30 There is so much I could learn from it.

08:34 I once saw someone post on WeChat Moments.

08:38 What did they say again?

08:40 They wrote a line in English,

08:43 something like:

08:44 "Everything is all about noise."

08:49 It resembled another phrase we've seen:

08:53 "Everything is all about taste."

08:56 They replaced "taste" with "noise."

08:59 I didn't really understand

09:01 what that slogan meant.

09:04 I may look into it when I have time.

09:08 And sound also makes me think of

09:10 things like

09:12 exhibitions we've seen,

09:14 which sometimes incorporate sound

09:17 as an element.

09:19 They might combine it with painting

09:22 or with art installations,

09:25 creating many different things.

09:30 And personally,

09:32 I've always loved temple bells.

09:35 I also love wind chimes,

09:39 and instruments like the handpan—

09:44 the sound of a handpan.

09:47 To me, these sounds

09:50 have a deeply healing presence.

09:52 When you hear them,

09:54 you feel,

09:56 wow,

09:56 the world is so quiet.

09:58 It's such a comforting feeling.

10:02 So I also wonder:

10:04 what roles do these sounds

10:06 play in our world?

10:09 Sound can be healing,

10:10 but it can also be noise,

10:12 something that may harm people.

10:14 What else can it be?

10:21 There is a term

10:22 known as "sound healing," right?

10:24 I haven't looked into whether

10:27 sound healing is scientific,

10:29 but

10:33 I'm deeply curious about these things.

10:37 I want to uncover

10:40 what lies behind what I don't yet know.