In 19th-century Shanghai watches were not a rarity: storefronts were adorned with timepieces from Switzerland, Germany and England. What was nowhere to be found was the label "Made in China", silently highlighting the absence of a domestic watchmaking industry. It was not until 1955 that the first watch made by Chinese craftsmen was born, marking the beginning of a new era in Chinese horology.
That year a group of watchmakers in Shanghai set out to produce twelve prototype Swiss-style "Selca" waterproof watches. Every component had to be manufactured individually, and in an era of material shortages the first Chinese-made watches were crafted from things commonly found but often overlooked: copper strips from musical instruments, steel wires from umbrellas, and sewing needles. Working with old, secondhand clock-making and repair machines and simple tools, the team shaped, polished and carved each part by hand with rudimentary files and chisels. In September 1955 they produced eighteen mechanical watches, each engraved with "Shanghai, China".
The Shanghai Watch Factory was established in 1957 and by early 1958 produced its first batch of watches, the A581, signifying the "first movement of 1958". Quality was comparable to Swiss brands such as Selca, with a continuous run time of over 36 hours and a daily deviation of less than one minute. On 1 July 1958 the watch was officially launched at the Shanghai Third Department Store, where all 100 pieces of the initial batch sold out as the doors opened and more than 1,000 customers registered on a waiting list in the first morning alone. In 1961 Premier Zhou Enlai bought a Shanghai watch and wore it until his passing in January 1976; the timepiece is now preserved in the National Museum of China. Through the 1960s and 1970s one out of every four Chinese watch wearers wore a Shanghai.
Two decades later the rise of quartz, spearheaded by Japan's Seiko, disrupted the global mechanical market. The factory hastily introduced its own line of electronic watches in 1987, but the domestic market was already oversaturated. The brand turned to technological innovation as its lifeline and focused on developing its own movements, reaching tourbillons by the early 21st century: in 2005, to mark its 50th anniversary, Shanghai introduced its first tourbillon timepiece, quickly snapped up by collectors. Since then the brand has cultivated an aesthetic that blends oriental restraint with contemporary design.
