Something must be seriously wrong with the world, or at least with my understanding of the global economics of the eyewear industry. I went and got new lenses for my glasses yesterday, and what I discovered prompted this story. First of all, I wanted to replace my 2.5-year-old lenses since they were very badly scratched. Not from mistreatment, but because the anti-reflective coating went FUBAR, possibly because of the water here in China. This is the second time I’ve had this problem. In 2000, I travelled to the Maldives and Sri Lanka, and the coating on my previous pair of lenses also became a mess of microlines that made it difficult to see. The last two pairs of lenses were purchased at Shopper’s Optical in Edmonton, and maybe that’s the common factor and not the international travel. I don’t really know.
I put off the quest for new lenses because I thought it would be a difficult undertaking for me here in China. I didn’t know the procedure for getting my eyes checked or if the old prescription would be understandable to the technicians here. Plus I wasn’t looking forward to having to choose new frames because of the difficulty of getting used to a new pair of glasses. (Whine, whine, whine….) But, the experience turned out to be quite easy, in fact. My girlfriend took me to a centre which is a collection of many eyeglass wholesalers, and she helped translate for me. Well, the one shop we settled on had a computer which “read” the prescription off of my old lenses. I didn’t know they could do that. It was a Topcon CL-100 Lensmeter, in case you are interested. And then they double checked it with the prescription that I brought with me. Cutting the lens blanks and fitting them into my glasses was the identical procedure that I would find in Canada, but it didn’t take an hour. More like 20 minutes.
Now here’s what surprised me about the whole thing. The new lenses cost me $18 CDN for the pair! That’s less than the cost of a dinner for two at any restaurant in Canada. They were high-index, single-vision lenses, with anti-reflective coating, and they were thinner than the old lenses, which were also high-index. I think I had a choice between lenses that came from Japan and those from Korea, and I probably ended up with the Japan lenses. I’m still incredulous about the low cost. In Canada, at least 2.5 years ago, I would have paid $100-150 CDN for the same lenses. I’m going to guess that the same is true today. Why the difference? Is it the large population here in China? Or the cheapness of the labour at the eyeglass store/lab? I don’t know, but it makes me wonder what people in Canada are paying for when they buy lenses.