A young man in Hangzhou moved out of his new apartment with his family to a rented place because it was too noisy upstairs!

Xiao Zhou (pseudonym), 32 years old, from Hunan, was hired by a company in Wuchang, Yuhang after graduating from university. After several years of hard work, in July 2018, he bought an 89-square-meter apartment in a community in Yuhang Future Science and Technology City.

The apartment complex was completed in 2016, so the buildings are relatively new. However, after living there for only a short time, Xiao Zhou and his wife moved out and rented a place elsewhere. When asked about the reason for the move, Xiao Zhou said he even called the police.

After the upstairs neighbors got new jobs

The Zhou family always heard various noises from upstairs.

This is Xiao Zhou's first house in Hangzhou. He also considered that he had a child and wanted to improve his living environment. Needless to say, he put a lot of effort into the decoration and maintenance. After the house was finished, Xiao Zhou moved in with his wife, child, father-in-law and mother-in-law.

For the first six months after moving in, life was wonderful. But starting at the end of 2018, when a new family moved in upstairs, Xiao Zhou said that his family's "nightmare" began.

According to Xiao Zhou, since the upstairs neighbors moved in, there has been constant noise from their daily lives, including muffled sounds of running and jumping rope, and the dragging of tables and chairs. Moreover, these sounds always occur at irregular intervals, sometimes at 11 or 12 at night, and sometimes at 4 or 5 in the morning, which greatly disturbs the family.

"I've been woken up by nightmares several times." Xiao Zhou's child is less than a year old, and his wife is still breastfeeding. "I'm on the verge of a breakdown."

Xiao Zhou told the police that he had difficulty sleeping due to the noise, had difficulty concentrating during the day, and was often irritable and had headaches, which he believed was neurasthenia.

Xiao Zhou said that he is not an unreasonable person. It is inevitable that there will be some noise when everyone lives in the same building. However, the noise from upstairs has a huge impact on his family's life. The children are often startled and cry. His father-in-law and mother-in-law cannot get enough rest and their health cannot take it. He and his wife are always "on edge".

Unable to resolve the issue with their upstairs neighbors, Xiao Zhou's family moved out of their new home and rented a place elsewhere. Xiao Zhou said that he had also taken the initiative to go upstairs to negotiate with them about this problem.

The family living upstairs is Ms. Zhang (pseudonym). They have a son and a daughter. The daughter is over ten years old and the son is four or five years old.

Xiao Zhou believes that his attitude was relatively calm when he went to negotiate, but when he went to their home, the other party's attitude was "not very good." They only said that it was normal to have children at home and that "they couldn't control them."

He also sought help from the property management company to coordinate, and even called the police. The police confirmed that Xiao Zhou had called the police, and the officers also communicated with Ms. Zhang.

Ms. Zhang also felt wronged. She told the police that the children were indeed quite lively, but she said that children are naturally active and like to run around. These are normal noises that families with children can understand. She did not intentionally make noise to disturb the Zhou family's life.

After several attempts at communication, little progress was made, and both sides felt that the other was "nitpicking," leading to a rift between the two families.

"Perhaps our communication went badly; the situation not only didn't improve, it got even worse." Xiao Zhou felt the noise was getting increasingly intense, so his in-laws couldn't take it anymore and simply took their child back to their hometown. He and his wife had to rent another single room and temporarily move into the rented apartment. This rental lasted for more than half a year. The downstairs neighbor bought a noise-generating device to retaliate.

During the more than half a year that he had been renting a place, Xiao Zhou said that he often went home to stay for a few days with hope, to see if the upstairs neighbors had moved out and if the noise situation had improved, but he was always disappointed.

"It's impossible not to be angry. I own my own house, and now I have to rent a place to live. How can I be so frustrated?" Xiao Zhou said. Putting aside the extra cost of one or two thousand yuan in rent each month, the conditions in rented places are definitely not as good as his own home. And thinking about how much time and energy he spent decorating and maintaining his new house, now he can't live there because of the family upstairs making trouble, he can't swallow this anger.

After much thought, Xiao Zhou decided to "fight fire with fire" and make the family upstairs experience what it's like to be bothered by noise.

In late June of this year, Xiao Zhou bought a "building vibration device" online. This device can be attached to the ceiling and remotely controlled via mobile phone to produce vibration and knocking noises.

Xiao Zhou installed it on the ceiling of his master bedroom and started using the vibration device remotely via his mobile phone from the beginning of July.

When the upstairs residents couldn't take it anymore, they called the police.

Once the building-shaking device was installed, Ms. Zhang and her family were so bothered that they called the police.

When the police arrived at the scene, it was past 11 p.m. The vibration device was still on, and the doors and windows of Xiao Zhou's house were tightly closed, with no one home.

The police officers stood at the door for a while and could clearly feel the regular vibrations. When they went to Ms. Zhang's house, they could hear a "thump-thump" sound, like a hammer hitting the wall, in both the master bedroom and the second bedroom. When people were lying in bed, it felt like someone was hitting something on their heads.

Ms. Zhang said that the frequency and volume of the noise seem to be controllable. Sometimes the sound is louder and the knocking frequency is faster, which is very annoying. Over the past month, neither the adults nor the children in the family have had a good rest.

The police contacted Xiao Zhou, who quickly admitted to installing the vibration device. He said he chose this "extreme" method because he was "resentful" and had no other choice.

“We understand how you feel, but what you did was definitely wrong, and it’s even suspected of being illegal.”

Faced with the police, Xiao Zhou quickly admitted his mistake.

On the other side, the police also gave Ms. Zhang, who lives upstairs, some advice and education: "The one who tied the knot must untie it. After all, you are neighbors. People need to understand each other. It's normal for it to be a little noisy when you have children at home, but please be more careful and try to keep the noise down during rest time. Is that alright?"

Ms. Zhang's attitude also changed. She agreed with the police officer's statement and said that she would pay more attention in the future and try to make the children move more quietly and make less noise.

She said that the house had been rented out before, and the family moved back at the end of last year. Because they have two children, it is sometimes noisy, but she often reminds the children and it is not intentional to make noise. Xiao Zhou complained to the property management and called the police, and she felt a little wronged.

Please reduce noise if you are upstairs.

Remove the vibration device from downstairs.

After Xiao Zhou installed the vibration device, Ms. Zhang took the initiative to contact Xiao Zhou to discuss the matter. The two had a calm and peaceful talk and both reflected on their behavior.

During the conversation with both parties, the police discovered that neither Ms. Zhou nor Ms. Zhang were unreasonable people. The previous communication breakdown was mainly due to attitude issues; both were holding a grudge and were unwilling to "give in."

Under the auspices of the police station, Ms. Zhang and Mr. Zhou sincerely apologized to each other and reached a settlement.

Ms. Zhang promised that she would try her best to avoid making noise after 11 p.m. and before 7 a.m. every day; Mr. Zhou said he would go home and remove and throw away the noise-making device.

However, because he deliberately created noise to disturb the normal lives of others, Xiao Zhou was still given an administrative warning by the police in accordance with the law.

It is understood that Xiao Zhou has now moved back home and the two parties are getting along well. The police have not received any further reports from either party.

The police said that the investigation later revealed that Ms. Zhou and Ms. Zhang were actually colleagues in the same group (different subsidiaries), a fact that neither of the two families involved in the conflict knew beforehand.