Everyone’s … rich” — the words spoken by my author Hyeonseo Lee, in Beijing for her appearance at the Bookworm International Literary Festival in March 2016. Years before, she had fled from North Korea to China, where she had hidden in plain sight until finding refuge eventually in Seoul. This was her first trip back.

She and I were standing near the Bookworm, the famous and sometimes infamous bookshop — and bar, restaurant, library and unofficial foreign correspondents’ club — often referred to as one of the best in the world. We were near it but seemed also miles away, in the middle of an ultra-modern outdoor shopping plaza surrounded by high-rises and populated by brand names from Adidas to Zara. It was one of those rare, blue-sky days, the weather crisp and the air clean, or so it seemed. We watched people milling about, all of them in haute couture and coiffed, all of them holding the latest mobile phones, a few of them also accessorised with well-groomed dogs on diamanté-studded leads. Shiny new cars traversed the main road. Hyeonseo was motionless, speechless, her eyes wide with incomprehension.

I asked her what was wrong — was she OK?

Slowly, she responded, and quietly, as much to herself as to me.

And, yes, they certainly were rich, especially in Sanlitun, the unofficial foreign concession, which even I with my terrible sense of direction can find easily now, if only for the Piccadilly Circus intensity of the lights, mainly from two central buildings of mixed residential and commercial use — but also, recently, from the Intercontinental Hotel tower, built in just over a year, the speed of its construction recalling the opening to James Kynge’s prescient, seminal China Shakes the World.

• Tags: China, Hyeonseo Lee, Issue 18, Kelly Falconer