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The pigeon whistle: A defining sound of old Beijing (2019)

The pigeon whistle: A defining sound of old Beijing (2019)

11 comments

·May 14, 2025
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FuriouslyAdrift

The sound of the whistle... https://youtu.be/VfXE-RxKna4

alistairSH

Thanks you, the article doesn't have the sound.

Nor does it have a photo of the whistle attached to a pigeon!!!

xg15

Isn't the leftmost pigeon carrying one here? http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/ctenglish/2018/cs/201911/W02019...

alistairSH

I guess it is, but it wasn’t clear to me before seeing other images.

xg15

Gotta be a sign of the times that the first spontaneous association I had was that of air raid sirens.

Thanks a lot for the link though!

dylan604

That's kind of horrific. Not only is there a horrible sound, but then the camera shows the results of this aerial attack with all of the bird poop. Such a strange video.

0xbadcafebee

You don't like Beijing's version of the whistle tip?

MrVitaliy

This sounds similar to the sound a hybrid Toyota makes when backing up. I wonder if in this geographic area, hybrid car awareness sounds should be something like construction banging, just to differentiate from the ambiance.

RandallBrown

I thought for sure this was going to be whistle designed to scare off pigeons or something. Turns out they attach whistles to pigeons so they make sounds when they fly! Very interesting.

ravila4

This is another informative video, if you want to see the crafting process: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x78adua

Kozmik1

I saw trained pigeons flying from my hotel rooftop in Wuhan when I visited in 2001. Someone on another building was commanding them to fly in patterns with flags. I don't recall if there were any whistles involved, but it was a really captivating sight to watch that I have never seen since.