On this day 67 years ago, on December 5, 1958 (October 25, 1958 lunar calendar), Sun Meitang, the "king of watches and clocks", died in Shanghai. Sun Meitang, a famous "king of watches and clocks" in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s, was originally a foreign business enterprise with the Chinese sign "Hendali Foreign Company". After Sun Meitang acquired Hendali from foreigners, he was in charge of the transformation and made it a pearl of China's watch industry. Sun Meitang, also known as Sun Peng, is a native of Yinxian County, Zhejiang Province. He was born in 1882. As soon as he graduated from Shanghai St. John's University in 1902, he took over the Shanghai Meihuali Watch Store run by his father Sun Tingyuan. Meihua Li was founded in 1876 in Sanma Road (now Hankou Road), Henan Road, Shanghai. Sun Tingyuan always had an idea in his mind: China, as the first country to invent timekeeping instruments, must produce its own clocks and watches. Unfortunately, he was old, and he entrusted this important task to his son Sun Meitang. Sun Meitang changed the common convention of operating clocks and watches in the industry at that time and also sold other imported goods. He believed that watch companies should only do watch business, otherwise they would be reduced to general merchandise stores. This unique decision to "lose the stroke and save the car" opened a precedent for the management reform of the watch industry at that time. In 1905, Sun Meitang was ordered by his father to set up a workshop-style clock-making experimental workshop in his hometown in Ningbo. He spared no expense to gather skilled craftsmen and mainly handmade clocks, and finally produced the first batch of domestic clocks. In 1912, Sun Meitang moved the workshop from Ningbo to Yangshupu, Shanghai in order to achieve the connection of production and sales. In 1915, Sun Meitang built a new Meihuali Clock Factory in Zhabei Tiantong'an (now Baoshan Road, Yokohama Road) in Shanghai, and the staff expanded to more than 100 people. The factory has a machinery manufacturing department, which uses machines to replace manual production of various gears, cores, discs and other parts; another mahogany clock rack department is set up to assemble screen clocks, large clocks, astronomical clocks, pavilion clocks, station clocks, and floor clocks. Among them, the plug-in clock is deeply loved by ordinary families due to its lightweight shape and diverse styles. The success of the four-sided 40-60 inch building clock made Meihuali famous all over the country. Then Meihuali broke out of the country with a 100-inch four-sided single-set clock and won the gold medal of the 1915 Panama World's Fair in one fell swoop. In 1917, Sun Meitang acquired his partnership equity, took over the Hengdali watch shop, and moved the general management office of Meihuali to the second floor of the Hengdali business building on Henan Road, Nanjing Road. He used Hendari's original procurement channels with foreign merchants, coupled with the many groups of Mervali's wholesale and retail operations, to achieve a boom in watch sales, so Sun Meitang has the title of "Watch King". His branches in Shanghai alone include Hendari, Shizhong, Huilindeng, Pacific, Washington and other watch houses, and three other distribution houses. By the 50th anniversary of Mervali's founding in 1925, there were 25 branches in 11 cities across the country (including clock factories), and the framework of enterprise groups was emerging. In 1931, the "January 28" Songhu War broke out. Sun Meitang's Meihuali clock factory, jewelry factory and a large number of private houses in Zhabei Tiantong Temple were all bombed by the Japanese army. His original plan of "clock first, watch later, step-by-step development" eventually came to nothing. But Sun Meitang, who was in trouble, was not used by the enemy. Fu Xiaoan, the mayor of Shanghai, refused to appoint Sun Meitang as the president of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce because he was in the same hometown as Sun, and mocked himself "I would rather be a tea basket than a traitor" ("tea dill" is Ningbo native language: poor man). In 1956, Meihuali was converted to a public-private joint venture. Sun Meitang died in Shanghai on December 4, 1958, at the age of 76. Sun Meitang Old photos of Hendari and Hendari Postcard issued on the 80th anniversary of Hendari's creation All staff of Hendari Shanghai