Coming to Seoul from China reminds me of the last time I drove into Las Vegas at night, when the endless and empty desert gave way to a sudden and tremendous onslaught of color and light.

I walked down each new avenue with my shoulders pushed forward, my neck stretched, my head swiveling upward and side-to-side. Seoul is neon and tall and alive, and it feels real.

Only one part of Dalian comes close: a stretch from Victory Plaza to Zhongshan Square, but even that runs shallow compared to Sinchon, where Sam and I quickly lost our way in streets overlapping and overflowing with everything for sale, everything available, everything thrown at you with a flashing sign and promising ads. I’m still not sure how I have any money left.

Most of my time and money has been spent in Sinchon, a district encircling several top universities and filled with college students flush with their parents’ money. This place leaves no excuse for saving.

Northeast China, even Dalian, is still marked by a scarcity of options when it comes to food and nightlife. The message boards on DalianXpat.com light up whenever a new western restaurant opens and foreign-friendly bars get extra credit just for existing. It’s not that Chinese food is bad, but there’s a limit to how many times you can order from the same standard menu, especially when you’ve grown up with California’s culinary diversity.

Seoul offers an overwhelming load of choices. Western fare has been the standard, not the occasional treat of the past five months, because here it’s no more expensive than a local meal and endlessly available. I had pizza for the second time tonight (Friday), Korean barbecue last night, and Chinese (though not really similar to Dongbei food) the night before. I eat at least one meal every day at the cafe on campus, where the menu is in English and prices are reasonable, at least by local standards.

Can all this be the result of consumer-driven capitalism and high-density living? I’m not sure. If so, I wonder how many Chinese cities will look like this in a few decades.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 9:49 pm and is filed under roadside blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.