Pictures soon, I swear.  

Broad generalizations from my limited experience. Cities. Real cities...not suburbs or exurbs or large towns. American cities at night tend toward the majestic. The Chicago lakefront, Manhattan, even someplace like Cincinnati from across the Ohio River. Tall buildings, regular windows, simply present - masses rising up in the darkness, streets cutting through them carrying the flows of cars. On the other hand, European cities at night seem to me enchanting. The low buildings and winding streets, lights illuminating a centuries-old fountain or church. Even a couple lanes of curving traffic can't dull the Plaza Mayor or the aroma of a Parisian restaurant.

Chinese cities, having been subject to the physical colonization of Europe and the cultural colonization of the United States, have elements of both. Tianjin's Italian district, or the gleaming towers of the Pudong New Area in Shanghai, for instance. But above all, Chinese cities at night are exuberant. They're filled with flashing, shifting lights - entire walls of buildings lit up like the Vegas Strip. The organized chaos of traffic adds to the effect, sparks coming together in swarms and just as quickly splitting apart. Think of the iconic Bird's Nest Olympic stadium, aglow in red - straining outward and showing off.

And lots more too, of course, from the rusting industrial to walls and gates built five hundred years ago. But it seems to me that, with good reason, exuberance is where they're headed.