Michele gave me a new mechanical watch for my birthday and I want to brag about it (without seeming to be bragging too much, of course). It is a Chinese watch made by the Tianjin Watch Factory which, at first glance, doesn’t seem like much to brag about but Tianjin has a great history.

The Tianjin Watch Factory, under the brand name Sea-Gull, is the world’s largest manufacturer of mechanical watch movements. According to Wikipedia, the Tianjin Watch Factory makes about twenty-five percent of all the mechanical movements worldwide. That is a whole bunch of watch movements, even if most of them are in watches with other names, including many Swiss names. As an aside, according to Google: a watch movement is considered Swiss if: the movement has been assembled in Switzerland and, the movement has been inspected by the manufacturer in Switzerland and; the components of Swiss manufacture account for at least 50 percent of the total value, without taking into account the cost of assembly. End aside.

To sort of start at the beginning, in 1955, the Chinese government put together four Chinese watchmakers to form the government-owned Tianjin Watch Company. In those days, the three main chronograph movement manufacturers were all Swiss: Lemania, Valjoux and Venus. To raise expansion money, Venus wanted to sell the machinery they had that made their excellent, but expensive to produce, Caliber 175 movement so they could upgrade to a less expensive design (they changed from a tower of gears that moved to start the stopwatch function to a simpler cam system). In 1963 the government – a committee, actually, that according to the factory was headed by the Ministry of First Light Industry and included the Air Force Command, Naval Command, Naval Supplies, Naval Navigation units and other departments totaling 38 senior officers participated – assigned Tianjin Watch Company the task of producing a Pilot’s Watch for the Air Force and Tianjin, the Chinese government, really, bought the Caliber 175 equipment and the design rights from Venus. Tianjin then upgraded the original 17-jewel movement to a new 19-jewel movement, the ST19, to make a more robust watch that could take the vibration and shock of being in a fighter jet. The final design was approved in 1965 – but, for some unknown reason 1963 has become the identifier – and Tianjin built 1700 of them for the Air Force under the name Sea-Gull.   

Ten years ago, in May 2009, I bought a fake Patek Philippe mechanical watch, from a fake watch dealer in a back alley off of Nanjing Road in Shanghai. As an aside, I was going to say Nanjing Road is roughly the equivalent of Fisherman’s Wharf or Times Square, but that isn’t really quite accurate. In Europe, many cities have a blocked off walking/shopping area that is both a tourist area and a local hangout, Chinese Cities have similar areas, except they are always a long, wide, main street (at least the shopping streets we saw were). Nanjing Road is Shanghai’s version. End aside. The fake Patek Philippe, it turned out, in an ironic twist, became my favorite watch. Watches have been getting bigger and my fake Patek Philippe was the largest watch I have and my other watches, being older and smaller, seemed increasingly outdated, it kept good time, and I liked the way it looked with its simple case and see-through back that showed off the mechanical works. Even though it was relatively expensive for a back alley watch, about $225, Michele remembers, ten years on, like any mechanical watch, it needs cleaning to run accurately. The last time I had a mechanical watch cleaned and oiled, it set me back $350 and I haven’t wanted to spend that much on this watch. Actually, I probably would except that the fake stainless steel finish is wearing off.

Michele wanted to replace my now non-op fake watch and she thought that replacing it with another Chinese watch had a – for lack of a better word – whimsical symmetry. After wandering around the web for who knows how long, Michele came up with the Tianjin Seagull Watch Group’s Sea-Gull 1963.

A digital watch is a tool for keeping time – in Formula One, they measure lap times to a thousandth of a second, no mechanical watch can do that – a mechanical watch has a slightly different raison d’être. They are artifacts of human mechanical cleverness and design, in a way, and they are also jewelry, in a way. Nobody pays $150,000 for an A. Lange & Sohne Richard Lange Perpetual Calendar Terraluna – or even $35,000 for a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, for that matter – because it keeps better time. Yeah, they keep pretty good time but, if you really want to keep time, use your smartphone. Mechanical watches are sold on heritage, among other things, and more than a couple of watch companies have reissued their most iconic designs to play on that heritage. Sea-Gull is not only a huge manufacturer of watch parts but they have been making mechanical watches since 1955 and they have been both expanding and moving upscale so in 2011 they decided to show their heritage by reissuing the Sea-Gull 1963, upgraded to 21 jewels, to celebrate its 50th Anniversary {sic}.

Since the original reissue was the same size as the original 1963, and the current reissue is now even larger, Michele spent even more time online finding the original reissue, at an online shop specializing in Russian watches in Munich, Germany. He likes them so much, it is the only non-Russian watch he sells. Now, thanks to Michele, I am the proud owner of a Sea-Gull 1963 Chronograph Official Pilot’s Watch with a Seagull ST19 movement, which arrived with a package of German Russian-style crackers.