Would You Dare to Walk on Air?
This breathtaking 536-meter-long glass bridge is suspended 300 meters above a canyon in Zhangjiajie, China. Look down and you’ll see a spectacular view beneath your feet.
But how is it made? And is that really safe? Here’s the secret: It’s not just regular glass. Think of laminated glass as a “sandwich” — made from three layers of tempered glass bonded together with a special interlayer film using high temperature and high pressure.
Extensive safety tests have proven its strength. Even when a group of strong men tried smashing it with sledgehammers, it didn’t shatter into fragments.
Surprisingly, you’ve probably seen it in everyday life: car windshields, building curtain walls, glass roofs.
Just look at the legendary 10-meter-high glass panels at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York, or the impressive oversized curved glass at the Shanghai Pudong Apple Store.
Leading Industrial Glass Hubs in China
These glass panels mostly come from Xingtai and Luoyang, China, which are the biggest industrial glass hubs. Xingtai is renowned for producing construction and industrial glass. They specialize in strong, durable glass used for building windows or in heavy machinery.
Luoyang, on the other hand, is famous for its precision and technology in glassmaking. This is where ultra-clear, tempered, and curved glass are produced. The massive curved glass panels you see at Apple Stores are made in Luoyang.
1,000 Miles for Factory Inspection
Speaking of high-quality glass…
We have an Albanian client who was looking for glass windows and doors for his villa, but he couldn’t find anything he wanted locally. So, he came to China. He’s really smart and knew exactly where China’s top cluster of glass windows and doors is. In no time, he found a glass window factory in Xingtai and a furniture door market in Foshan, which is a major hub for furniture manufacturing.
But he didn’t realize how big China is. To make it clear: these two factories are about 1,800 kilometers apart. That’s like crossing the entire United States.
So, we helped him with factory inspections to make sure the factories were legit, had the production capacity to deliver the products and conducted QC checks on the goods.
After that, we recommended shipping the windows and doors separately from the nearest ports, which helped save on inland shipping costs.
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