I am always deeply attracted by the history of Chinese watch industry, this pushes me to buy more China brand watches, there are so many amazing mechanical watches from these traditional watch factories in China like Sea-gull, Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing and so on, some not only design nice watches, but also have fascinating history. Compared with their watches, I more love reading the stories behind these traditional watch factories. The main difference between these Chinese traditional watch factories and new rising homage brands is that the former has their own movements, and Sea-gull is one of the biggest movement suppliers in the world, while a few new homage watches still making up stories to pretend as Swiss brands to cheat customers. The Sea-gull watch I am going to review today is a special model made to pay tribute to the first vintage Dongfeng watch in history of Tianjin Watch Factory, the watch looks nice and it is the best-looking casual watches in my collection.
The Sea-gull watch has a small size that is 38mm in case diameter, this is a size I like, with a small crown, it is very comfortable to wear, and the polished case is only 12mm in thickness. It has a solid case back that has the relief of “东风” and waves in polishing finish, in a sanded background. The entire watch is polished and has arch-shaped lugs that naturally extended from the case to fit your hand in a more comfortable way, I choose the watch with a black leather band, but I could not wait to change the nylon strap on, the nylon band looks better on this watch that has a little vintage flavor.
The silver dial is under the protection of a sapphire crystal that has a arched face, the old Dongfeng watch used acrylic face, on the new model, the sapphire crystal can not only prevent scratches, but also is more clear and has a higher transparence to let you read the dial. The arched sapphire crystal face is a distinctive feature of the watch. The silver dial has simple design but it still looks beautiful to me, check the pictures, the radioactive sunray finish is fine and when you shaking the watch slowly, you will find the unique reflected light on the dial, this is really amazing design for such a Chinese watch, I saw few homage watches can do this. There is no date window. On the top of printings “ZhONGGUO TIANJIN”, there is an unique logo.
The watch is equipped with a ST16 automatic movement, which is independently developed by Sea-gull, the movement beats 21,600 times per hour and has a 36 hours power reserve, I have received it for three weeks, now the watch gains about eight seconds each day, I think this accuracy is acceptable to most people.
