The nation's master watch and clock makers have emerged from a difficult decade to make the most of the luxury market. Wang Kaihao reports in Tianjin.
Staring at the microscope and testing tiny details - Yang Zuobin, 63, devotes his mind to the miniature world of mechanical watch movements.
Yang has been at Sea-Gull Watch Group for 42 years. The factory is in Tianjin, the birthplace of China's first watch in 1955.
He was honored as one of 12 "Chinese Watch and Clock Masters" selected by the Chinese Horologe Association in June, and has the title "chief technician" at work.
"I am only a worker, not an engineer," he says, humbly. "I didn't make them, but assembled them."
In 2011, he assembled the first watch on the Chinese mainland that combines three major symbols of a high-end mechanical watch: tourbillon, minute repeater and calendar.
An anonymous businessman from Xiamen, Fujian province, bought it for 1.28 million yuan ($201,000), the most expensive domestic watch ever sold. It is a complex and small machine containing 435 components.
"Putting these components together takes days, but I have to spend months adjusting the movements and erasing errors."
Yang began assembling watch movements in 2004, when he was supposed to retire.
He had planned to open a repair store in a supermarket after retirement, but his stall was cancelled right before he moved in.
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