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Shanghai uncle’s 100,000 vintage alarm clocks
By:Lu Yukun  |  From:english.eastday.com  |  2021-03-10 13:12

More than ten years ago, Xu Dingji spent all his savings and embarked on a long journey of sorting out and selling the 100,000 mechanical clocks from the bankrupted Shanghai Clock Factory. People praised him for preserving these vintage clocks and said that he should find resources and even seek governmental help to support this cause. However, Xu Dingji didn't think so. He said frankly, "This is simply a business. It's also because I like it. It's not as noble as many believe."

Recently, he has become popular on the Internet, and the number of orders for his restored clocks has soared. Some people have suggested to him more than once, "Why don't you hire someone to help you fill out the orders and do the packing?" Xu Dingji has replied, "This is a very delicate job for me. It's not exaggerating to say that this would require working as an apprentice for three years, and this will not work if I can’t find someone who really likes this craftsmanship as much as I do."

Xu Dingji's home is a two-bedroom house with an area of 50 square meters located in a prime area of Huangpu District. However, this comfortable space has been squeezed into a “snail's house” because of the alarm clocks and mechanical parts piled from the living room to the bedroom and even the toilet.

One needs to cross a threshold of piled up parts to enter his room, and a careless turn may cause a small clock "debris flow". However, Xu Dingji said that in his eyes, there is a lot of stuff, but it's not chaotic. He has a map in his mind, which is very clear to him.

Xu Dingji's business on Taobao has flourished. Up to now, he has sold more than 10,000 alarm clocks, and his investment has been recouped. However, the furnishings in Xu Dingji’s home are still so old that his life still looks rather poor. Maybe the 100,000 clocks have left an indelible mark on his life. He prefers a pure, honest and quiet life. He completed all the jobs of his Taobao shop named "Classic Products——Shanghai Diamond Alarm Clock " by himself, including updating new products, customer service, order processing and shipping, and maintenance, day after day.

Like all the old brands in Shanghai, the history of mechanical clocks and the watch industry is full of the enthusiasm and patriotism of modern national industrialists who wanted to compete with those dominant Japanese and German brands. Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, Shanghai already had four local brands, which were "Diamond", "Changming", "Locomotive" and "Horseshoe", while the most well-known brand since then and through reform and opening up, was the  table clock brand "555".

In the 1990s, the clock market became dominated by quartz clocks and electronic watches. The precision of these products brought a blow to traditional mechanical clocks. The major clock factories in Shanghai were gradually losing customers amid the modern market economy and technological progress.

The clock factory where Xu Dingji worked is no exception. He said: "At that time, our factory's annual output was 10 million at the peak, and despite the poor sales prospects, it continued to produce, resulting in a serious backlog of products."

Unable to follow the market trend, the surplus products were piled everywhere in the factory. Some warehouses were in disrepair all the year round and the good clocks were finally sold as scrap metal. Xu Dingji felt it was such a shame and waste.

"So I bought those clocks from the factory and first set up a vending stall at the door of the factory workshop. I would move to other places once the market in a certain area had saturated. But it didn’t work long as street vending was later banned due to stricter urban management.

The process of setting up a stall here and there made Xu Dingji realize that some people still like mechanical clocks. Although the market is small, mechanical clocks have their own value. They must not be sold as waste products.

Since 2000, every time the clock factory cleared its inventory, Xu Dingji would spend his savings to buy them and finally collected more than 100,000 alarm clocks.

"The factory mortgaged a lot of valuable Xi Ma clocks (refined alarm clocks with best quality) to customers. I made a lot of inquiries and redeemed some of the mortgaged clocks. It cost me hundreds of thousands of RMB in those days."

Since the video filmed about his story with the 100,000 alarm clocks went viral on internet, the sales of Xu Dingji's Taobao shop have increased a lot. "I used to sell nearly a hundred a month, but now I can sell up to forty or fifty a day."

 

Source text and pictures by: Shanghai Observer

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