Residents who are fed up with the noise from China's ubiquitous "dancing grannies" are resorting to a special device that could mess with the speakers that blast out loud music.
They use an infrared remote control dubbed "anti-square dancing magical device" to silence the noisy dancing troupes that have taken over public squares, parks, and housing estates across China. [...] But with scarce public spaces in urban China, the loud music has become a major nuisance for other residents and led to intense disputes. In 2013, someone in the central city of Wuhan dumped feces on a group of dancing women. And in 2016, a man in the southern city of Guilin, angered by the noise, shot at a dancing group's loudspeaker with an air gun and accidentally hit a woman on her thigh.
Merchants of the new square dancing repeller are advertising an easier way to stop the noise. The device, priced at $15 to $40 each on shopping site Taobao, resembles a universal remote control and is able to shut down most speakers operated by infrared signals, according to the vendors.
The pictures, it's noteworthy to say, make the device look like it has been built into the case of a small flashlight, not a remote control.
Sounds like a TV-B-Gone:
But are infra-red controlled speakers really common? I'd expect bluetooth to be the protocol of choice and not easily duped by such a device. Or is this something else, and the news story has it garbled?
Elijah
------ can't read Chinese and has not searched for primary sources