To better reflect the sound of my hometown, I also returned to the place where I was first born, Shengzhou, Shaoxing, a small city not far from Hangzhou, which I still feel is an important place even though I didn’t grow up here most of my life. Shengzhou is more famous for Yueju Opera, which is one of the significant Chinese opera genres. I will discuss this part in detail in another blog.

My recordings in the Gongchenqiao area of Hangzhou made me think that my Sound might not have been very distinctive, as a lot of the more grounded sounds had disappeared. So I returned to my grandmother’s house, which is in a small village surrounded by mountains and water. With young people preferring to work in the city, most of the village’s residents are now elderly. They generally lead a self-sufficient life, with their land to grow vegetables. Since there are few young people, the village is usually quiet. I recorded the cries of some poultry, the ambient sounds of the village, and the sounds of some elderly people beating drums and reciting Buddhist scriptures. When I listen back to these sounds, they are very special because we don’t have many chances to get in touch with such sounds after living in the city for a long time.

The location of my field recording was a natural bamboo forest near the entrance of my grandmother’s village. I used the Sennheiser 416 microphone, which has more penetrating power and can record more details, and connected it to the sound device’s mix pre for noise cancellation. This was also the first time I used the 416 to record outdoors, and I could hear the sound from several dozen metres away very clearly when I was wearing monitor headphones.

When I listen to my recordings, I can hear the apparent scraping of bamboo leaves in the bamboo forest and even the buzzing of insects vibrating their wings as they fly by the microphone. I could also hear cars traveling down the road in the distance and the sound of the family dog barking in the house next to me. The only downside is that I didn’t bring a stand with me to record with, which resulted in my recordings possibly producing some additional noise due to the shaking of my handheld.