One of the world’s biggest mechanical enterprises started in 1955, established by four men with nothing more than a small shop and a small amount of tools. They built a watch based on the Swiss Sindaco 5 Jewel pin-level design and named it the WuXing, putting it into limited production and producing every model by hand.

China's First Watch

2 years later, the Tianjin WuYi Watch factory was established, immediately releasing an excellent Swiss-design based 17 jewel watch, called the WuYi. Today they are treated like artifacts and in high demand by collectors. The site was relocated and was dubbed the Tianjin Watch Factory in 1962. By 1965, the factory was delivering heavy shipments of watches to the air-force for use by pilots. The following year, the factory made a unique accomplishment-they developed a watch that was 100% Chinese designed.

China's First Chronograph

But that was only the beginning. In 1970, the famous Bulova Accutron function was successfully integrated into the new watches. After-wards, several fine watches were made, such as the ST5 and ST6. They were succeed by the ST7 day/date automatic watch, an extremely modern watch for that period. However, due to China’s severed relations with the rest of that world during that period, this watch was never well known outside of China.

A decade later, the Chinese watch industry was facing even more problems, this time in the form of a changing economic policy in China and the fact that the mechanical watch market was declining, being replaced by quartz digital watches. However, the factory continued to press on.

In 1990, the factory became a national level enterprise, becoming the Tianjin Sea-Gull Corporation two years later. The factory decided to produce only Quartz watches, but reversed their decision just 5 years later, bringing a brighter future to the company. The company produced such fine watches as ST6D, ST16, and ST17, and was responsible for more then a quarter of the world’s mechanical movements by 2005. Slowly, but surely, Sea-Gull proved to the world that not all Chinese products are “cheap watch replica” or “cheaply assembled things”. 2 years ago, Sea-Gull has established its position as a well known quality watch maker on the global map, pushing into European and American markets. Today, they remain an important factor in watch making worldwide, and legacy of skillful Chinese watch-making tradition.

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