I think it’s hard for Americans to comprehend just how impressive the American lifestyle is, and how surprising seeing it was for people from a time before the internet and a society that tried to keep that sort of information out. I can’t even come up with a good metaphor - maybe it would be like going to North Korea and finding out that everyone there (even poor people) had flying cars and robot butlers like in the Jetsons. When I immigrated as a child, I recall looking around and thinking “This is like a comic book.”
I went to Taiwan a couple of years ago and it was different but not dramatically better or worse. Otherwise, no, I haven’t traveled out of the country much.
But the stuff that surprised me when we came to the USA was, for example, the availability of bananas. In the Soviet Union, I had gotten to taste bananas because my grandmother was one of the relatively few people at the factory where she worked who would occasionally have business trips to Moscow, and she would sometimes bring bananas back with her for me and my sister. Otherwise we would only eat fruit that grew locally and only when it was in season (except if my grandmother preserved it). So it’s hard for me to imagine going anywhere now that might impress me as much as the USA did then - I doubt even living like a Saudi prince would. (I guess the Saudi princes have authority over other people which is like nothing I’ve known. I’m just talking about their access to luxury products.)
I think it’s hard for Americans to comprehend just how impressive the American lifestyle is, and how surprising seeing it was for people from a time before the internet and a society that tried to keep that sort of information out. I can’t even come up with a good metaphor - maybe it would be like going to North Korea and finding out that everyone there (even poor people) had flying cars and robot butlers like in the Jetsons. When I immigrated as a child, I recall looking around and thinking “This is like a comic book.”
Have you had the chance to compare it to shops in other western countries in the last few years?
I went to Taiwan a couple of years ago and it was different but not dramatically better or worse. Otherwise, no, I haven’t traveled out of the country much.
But the stuff that surprised me when we came to the USA was, for example, the availability of bananas. In the Soviet Union, I had gotten to taste bananas because my grandmother was one of the relatively few people at the factory where she worked who would occasionally have business trips to Moscow, and she would sometimes bring bananas back with her for me and my sister. Otherwise we would only eat fruit that grew locally and only when it was in season (except if my grandmother preserved it). So it’s hard for me to imagine going anywhere now that might impress me as much as the USA did then - I doubt even living like a Saudi prince would. (I guess the Saudi princes have authority over other people which is like nothing I’ve known. I’m just talking about their access to luxury products.)
Maybe like an American computer nerd going to that famously huge Shenzhen tech mall?