Tan Zehua

Tan Zehua is the elder statesman of China's independent watchmaking renaissance — a master craftsman born in 1953 in Hunan who has spent nearly sixty years in the trade, and a full member of the AHCI (Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants) since 2019. Born into a family of watchmakers, he apprenticed under his father — a famous local watch repairman — from 1966, at age 13, then spent fourteen years working in a watch factory before opening his own watch shop in 1980. Of his five-plus decades in horology, some forty years were devoted to restoring antique watches and clocks; only in his later years did he pivot to creating watches of his own, which places him — despite a career reaching back to the 1960s — among the second generation of Chinese independents, alongside makers decades his junior. Based today in Shenzhen's Futian district, he works essentially alone, and like the great one-man independents everywhere he is also his own toolmaker: he built his own machine for applying Côtes de Genève and a milling machine for bevelling.

His track record as a creator is remarkable for its concentration: four in-house movements, each named for its order of completion, plus an invention of genuine consequence. The Work No. 1 announced his intent — a movement built around an enormous 16mm balance wheel in a 19th-century pocket-watch layout, with the balance raised above lowered bridges so its rim floats over the gear train, a swan-neck regulator unconventionally hung over the balance from the opposite end, a subdial at one o'clock displaying traditional Chinese time, and classical circular Côtes de Genève, perlage, and bevelled countersinks. The Work No. 2 conquered the long power reserve: ten days of autonomy from twin parallel barrels connected by a patented gear system that keeps the movement just 6mm thick. The Work No. 3 then solved the problem that long reserves create, adding a third, 30-hour barrel that serves not to extend the reserve but as a constant-force intermediary — continuously rewound by the main barrels so the escapement receives stable torque across the entire ten days. The Work No. 4 changed direction entirely: a time-only piece finished completely by hand without computer aid, inspired by Philippe Dufour, with warm German silver bridges in a Glashütte-tinged style — the main bridge even bearing the famous 'horns' of Dufour's Simplicity. Crowning it all is his patented Di-Axial escapement, an improvement on George Daniels' Co-Axial: with locking jewels and impulse jewel on separate components it is far easier to service, runs with less friction — eliminating the need for lubrication — and requires up to 30 percent less power.

His expertise, as the AHCI summarizes it, centers on core movement development, movement polishing technology, and above all the stable, long-term transmission of energy — the thread connecting all four Works and the escapement. Today his watches reach international collectors through Watchmakers United, the Geneva boutique devoted to independents, where current models — the Rainbow series (including the Rainbow 603, Rainbow Overturn, and Rainbow King for Sword) and the Melody — retail from roughly CHF 10,000 to CHF 26,500, with several editions already sold out. In a scene often defined by its youth, Tan Zehua is the living bridge: a watchmaker whose hands were trained in Mao-era repair shops and whose inventions now sit, patented and celebrated, at the modern frontier of the escapement.