Sinuiju

I arrived in Sinuiju on the overnight train from Pyongyang, and the light coming through the compartment window was the particular grey-blue of dawn in northern latitudes, that cold, not-yet-daylight quality that makes everything look provisional. We crossed the Yalu River on the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, and for a few minutes I was looking at both countries simultaneously — the Korean bank behind us, the Chinese bank ahead, the river running slow and brown below. Then we pulled into Dandong station and Sinuiju receded, and I spent two days in China looking back at North Korea from across the water.

What I saw from the Chinese side was both more and less than I had expected. Sinuiju’s waterfront is modest: low buildings, a Ferris wheel that appeared to be operating, the distinctive green of Korean tile roofs visible above the riverside trees. Dandong, on the other hand, is everything that happens when a provincial Chinese city is left to develop commercially — towers of glass, LED advertising, a riverside promenade with a Starbucks and a KTV bar. The contrast from the middle of the bridge (if you can get there) is one of the most striking images I know of from the twenty-first century: the same river, two entirely different decisions about what a city is for.

Entering Sinuiju from the train means entering through the border formalities that are the most intense I’ve experienced anywhere — not because they are fast or frightening in the way of borders designed to intimidate, but because they are thorough in a specific, methodical way that suggests the process has been refined over decades. Devices are checked. Books are examined. A customs officer leafed through my copy of a novel with the careful attention of someone looking for something they have been told might be there. Eventually everything was returned and I was waved through, and the train continued into the interior.

The city itself — on the occasions I glimpsed it through the train window before the organized visit began — felt more commercially active than Pyongyang. Markets visible from elevated track. Bicycle traffic thick at intersections. A woman carrying what appeared to be a very large quantity of cabbage on the back of a bicycle. Sinuiju is a Special Economic Zone, an experiment in controlled market activity that has had uncertain results, and you can feel the experiment in the air: a little more improvised, a little less managed, the performance of the capital giving way to something that looks more like people just trying to sort things out.

What stays with me about Sinuiju is the Yalu River itself. From the North Korean embankment, on a still evening, you can see the reflection of Dandong’s lights in the water — the hotel towers, the advertising screens, the colored lights on the riverside promenade. The reflections are more vivid than the reality, which is the particular trick that water plays with light. I stood on the embankment for a while with my guides and we all looked at the Chinese lights in the Korean water and nobody said anything very much about it. The river keeps moving. That’s the thing about rivers: they don’t hold the border still.

When to go: Sinuiju is typically visited as part of the trans-Siberian railway route that connects Pyongyang to Beijing via Dandong, or on tours that specifically include the border region. April through October offers the most comfortable weather for the river walks and border area visits. The perspective from Dandong — a short trip across the border — is worth adding if your itinerary permits the exit and re-entry.