"re4 nao4"

There isn't really an English translation for "re" (4th tone) and "nao" (4th tone). However, it could be literally translated as heat and noise and the emphasis would have to be on the noise. The Chinese like "re nao". On the bus this morning the driver had his radio playing full blast, it wasn't playing anything in particular it was just a noise, a terrible din and at lunch time today a colleague and I went to the canteen where I was, once again, exposed to a terrible din. The concept that music might be there to create an atmosphere, to stay in the background, is lost on them. Whatever the song, and it could be "Jingle Bells" in the middle of June, it is turned up full blast. This love of noise is, however, reflected in a number of other ways too; there might be two people sitting next to each other in a cafe and they have nothing better to do than shout at each other and then there are the telephone conversations where you actually think they might be shouting because the other person at the end of the line is some distance away.
The "heat thing" could be loosely translated as bustle and this too is an interesting phenomenon. Sitting in an empty bar, a Chinese might walk in and sit right next to you even when you are the only two people in the bar. It is not that he or she is looking for a conversation, it is just natural for them to drift close to the other person. In mentioning this or similar phenomena such as their getting on the bus before you get off or their blocking the whole of the escalator, or their walking in front of you in a queue, they will invariably tell you that China has too many people.
The picture shows "re nao" at Auchan in Suzhou.