Yesterday I went with friends to buy glasses at Luohu Commercial City. They don’t check for glaucoma, but the shops have machines that measure your prescription automatically (hum in hum out hum in again). The lenses are printed in half an hour (if they have supplies onsite), it takes 1.5 hours if they have to bring the lenses in from a nearby warehouse (or borrow from a neighbor). We were told that most of the eyeglass bosses are from Zhejiang, where most glasses are made. (Shenzhen is actually one of China’s 7 major eyewear manufacturing regions, so maybe our salesperson was boasting about her hometown?) She also told us that its possible to purchase AI glasses. (Next time, yes!) The glasses collections were fun and relatively inexpensive. As are clothes and everyday items, including a curated selection of electronics that appeal to people buying electronics for everyday use and not because of a shanzhai wow factor.

A few impressions:

Last time I moseyed to Luohu Commercial City, it was drab and dark. Yesterday, it popped. The surge of Hong Kong people crossing over to spend an afternoon shopping and eating and snacking, seeing dentists and enjoying the odd mani-pedi and/or massage reminded me of back in the day, when it seemed that Hong Kong Cantonese was the lingua franca of Shenzhen (meaning, of course, Dongmen, Luohu, and Caiwuwei. Parts Huaqiangbei.)

What did I notice aside from all the people? Most were older. Methinks that younger people are at more upscale malls that require additional travel to and from the border. At Luohu its just on and off with an ID swipe between. I also noticed so much food. Everyone was eating. And the default language was Cantonese, even though if answered in Mandarin, people immediately switched languages. Also, lots of foreigners, but I didn’t get the sense that the white folks were North Americans. But I didn’t get close enough to