Chinese Glasses

Last weekend, Michelle (W.) and I ventured out to find the Eyeglass Wholesale Market of Shanghai. Our sources from Chinese people and the Internet told us that it would be located “at the Shanghai Railway Station.” That’s it. We were told to take the metro to the railway station (not the south station!) and look for it.

We got out, asked some people and eventually found it. Apparently they had relocated to a new location. Indoors and with air conditioning. It was legit.

So we first did a walk through and had people ask us whether we wanted to buy eyeglasses and to please take a look at their inventory. Eventually, I just walked into a random store and started looking through their glasses. The saleslady pulled out various pairs saying to me, “When I saw you, I already had an idea of what style you would like.”

After picking out a pair that I liked enough to buy, I had my eyes rechecked in a small back room. It was all the usual machines you would see at any other eyeglass place. Put your chin and forehead against the bracket and look at the tree/house in the distance. They rip out a printout and then you put on sample prescriptions and look at an eye chart to confirm your prescription. Best part? It’s basically a free (or included) eye check up. Back home, you pay extra for that!

After the prescription is good, you pick out a pair of glasses, bargain the price down they send the order to be made. The glasses are made rather quickly. I didn’t even know they had gone to make the lenses when the guy comes back and says “take a look to confirm that we used the high-index lenses.” I confirmed. They set another guy to shape the lenses to fit the selected frames. You test them out when they are done, you pay and you are ready to leave.

The whole process of selecting eyewear, eye check up, making the glasses and testing them out took about 2.5 hours. It probably would have been faster if I wasn’t so picky about picking out a pair either. The process is so fast! Back home it would take about a week for them to send the order to a factory or something to make it. In China, there is no need for that since everything is ready already.

I have been wearing my new glasses for a few days now and have had no problems with them. New glasses within a few hours for 180RMB (US $26.33) for frames, lenses and eye checkup. I think that I can try to bargain that price down a little more if I go back for another pair!