When you have an education system such as Taiwan’s, one that is designed to train the population to be unquestioning worker drones from the moment they leave the womb, unexpected consequences are bound to occur.

Back in 1999 the BBC ran a story where they cited a report claiming that ‘eighty-five percent of high-school students and ninety percent of university students now need to wear glasses‘.

Indeed, walk around for just five minutes in Taiwan and it feels like half the population is wearing glasses, with the other half no doubt wearing contact lenses.

The report went on to explain that the reason for Taiwan’s atrociously bad eyesight problems was largely because of ‘parents pressuring children to read Chinese characters, play musical instruments and operate computers at a very young age‘.

Fast forward to 2011 and over a decade later, learning Chinese is still a hellish schedule of memorization learnt drilled into young kids, computers are integrated into student’s lives more than ever, and parent’s still demand that their kids be concert-grade pianists before they’ve learnt to even hold chopsticks.

So what’s the solution?

Do you completely overhaul Taiwan’s education system? Make parent’s realise they’re doing some serious harm to their kids? Fund government initiatives to tackle the widespread and growing cultural traditions at the root of the cause?

Hell no.

Just build a few more of these and she’ll be right…

Ladies and gentlemen, spotted at around 2am near Taoyuan City on an early Saturday morning, what you’re looking at there is a 24-hour open optometrist.

Why work towards fundamentally fixing Taiwan’s 24 hour study culture problems when you can just fix it with economical free market convenience?

Round the clock available coke bottle glasses for everyone!



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