Do you think I’m wasting my time talking?
2 Likes
Ok now the prick is doing it in the daytime too. To me it looks like a big barrel of trash he is burning. not a bbq or paper money burner or something more reasonable.
I think the normal local approach in this situation wouldn’t be to go to the police, but to your local lizhang (里長? Unsure, my Chinese is awful). Politely explain the problem and he/she should be able to mediate.
In my last place I had a neighbour who kept banging on my door at 2-3am to ask (nicely) if I could stop the buzzing noise. There wasn’t any buzzing noise that I could hear, and I let him come in and look around to confirm that, and even tried moving my computer to the other side of the room to see if it helped, but nothing did. Poor guy looked like he hadn’t slept in months.
Anyway! When he couldn’t find the problem, and when other people in my building weren’t interested in helping him, he eventually brought the lizhang around and they talked to everyone in the building. I don’t think they ever figured it out, but they did try.
I have two neighbors that do this plus a few businesses down the street with 8ft tall curbside incinerators.
edit: the guy downstairs burns mostly food containers plus boxes and plastic bags. I stared at him one day and after that he stopped for a few months. He looks around apprehensively when he does it but neighbors walk by and don’t say anything. We talked to our realtor about it and she encouraged us to contact an environmental agency or something. so far we haven’t done that. Not sure which is worse- burning or dumping as both seem ubiquitous here in Taitung.
I don’t get it because as lame as it is to wait and then scramble for the garbage truck, it is free, nearly daily, and there is an app for it’s real time/estimated arrival.
I don’t understand why he needs to burn garbage. Don’t they just come pick it up where you’re at?
He’s probably too tight-fisted to buy garbage bags.
Burning garbage is technically illegal. The lizhang might be worth a try, although I’ve noticed that lizhangs tend to be exactly the sort of old codgers who burn garbage on their balconies.
2 Likes
I would’ve called the police if a neighbor started banging on my door at 3am. And I definitely wouldn’t have let him in. It worked out okay for you, but you never know.
1 Like
Burning for sure. That produces the toxic and cancerous fumes you breathe in, especially if it’s plastic.
1 Like
The pick up is right infront of his house. Did u see the state of the roof? Its like a jungle. Seems like a typical old taiwanese who doesn’t care about others and does what suits them.
Lol, my downstairs neighbour also has a thing for buzzing sounds. He’s been to my place a few times to look for it, but we never found it nor can anyone else hear it
This acute tinnitis can usually be remedied by a thorough application of ice pick
1 Like
Another neighbor with a buzzing obsession? Y’all are crazy and way too trusting being so neighborly. I barely even make eye contact with my neighbors. 
I definitely wouldn’t let a stranger snoop around my apartment because he claims he hears a “buzzing” sound.
1 Like
I had that too, but than I heard the buzzing … until one night at 4 AM I woke up and discovered that the neighbor one floor down actually had a machine they operated to manufacture something. Never heard it again after I busted in their place.
Dude upstairs from our apartment has some lathe or other woodworking device at a best guess. He fires it up every now and then to do something or other with it, I really dunno, make some wooden ghost money holders or something important like that, if such a thing exists. Luckily he only uses that thing during the day, not at night like all of his other power tools.
What time does OP go to bed?
If he/she goes to bed like 3am or 4am, bring your scooter to his door and start, or perhaps, start a loud music lol.
I’ve been in this place twenty plus years. Taiwan is a noisy place and from my experience, no matter how annoying if a noise is regular it will eventually fall into the background noise. In fact on days when it isn’t heard, you’ll feel something is wrong.
I lived right next to a light house in owls head Me for a summer with a fog horn blasting n my ear. You don’t notice it after a while.
I live in a place where across the street there is a construction of building going on. So around 7am, they are noisy af. And it lasts whole day during weekends (well since I’m mostly home on weekends). 
If you live in a building 25 years+ old expect some renovation going on throughout the year.
1 Like
The house across the street from me was renovated last year, and there was a morning when one of the workers started angle-grinding and nail-gunning at like 5:30am. A couple minutes later one of my other neighbours went out into the street and yelled, at the top of her voice, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING DOES THIS SEEM LIKE A REASONABLE TIME TO DO CONSTRUCTION WORK TO YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP” (translation approximate).
Then she called the police, and stood outside the house until they arrived so the dude couldn’t sneak out and disappear.
She’s my hero.
As for the buzzing, my theory is electrosensitivity!
5 Likes