Why You Should Wear a Watch Dating in China

There’s a lot of jewelry made for women: necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings, and various other pieces of precious metal and shiny rocks. Jewelry, in general, is marketed towards women. Pieces that are marketed towards men are often marketed in a way that implies that they’re supposed to be given to the women in their lives, like engagement rings.

Accessories tend to be marketed towards women. Men aren’t encouraged to care as much about the sartorial choices that they make than women are. So there aren’t a lot of accessories that are marketed towards men. But there’s one accessory that a man is encouraged to wear.

That accessory is the wristwatch. It’s one of the few pieces of jewelry that’s marketed towards men. Between all the new money that’s springing up in China and a populace that’s eager to spend all that new money, China finds itself as the single biggest market for luxury timepieces and one of the biggest markets for watches in general.

So a lot of people in China wear watches. With the population becoming more and more fashion-forward and conscious about what they wear, there’s almost an expectation for men to wear a watch when they go out on dates, but there are a lot of reasons for that beyond just that implied expectation. Here’s why you should wear a watch dating in China.

A watch shows off status.

China, as mentioned previously, is the leading market for luxury timepieces. Chinese consumers aren’t ignorant when it comes to the cost of a timepiece, they know how expensive watches can be. Many watch enthusiasts are so aware that many of them travel abroad to take advantage of lower sales taxes when purchasing their timepieces.

So if you’re going out on a date with a Chinese woman and you come in with a great watch, then you’re basically signaling that you’re a man of means, that you’ve worked hard and are now reaping the benefits of your success.

A watch ties your outfit together.

Of course, the number of men who have the means to put together the money to buy a fine timepiece from one of Switzerland’s watchmaking houses isn’t all that large and you may not be able to count yourself among them. But just because you’re not able to buy a watch with the words “SWISS MADE” printed on the dial doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t wear a watch at all.

A lot of clothing brands contract out manufacture of their watches. This means that they often have a line of watches of various styles at fairly affordable price points, so you’ll have options depending on the clothes you want to wear.

Beyond clothing brands, there are many watchmakers from outside of Switzerland, such as the watchmakers of the United States and Japan, that make affordable, high-quality timepieces that can also tie an outfit together.

They may not come with the same social cache that the Swiss brands do, but a fashionable population is sure to appreciate how they complement your clothing all the same.

How to pick one:

Beyond the price, there are a few factors that you need to take into consideration when picking a watch, whether you’re going to wear it to a date or you’re just looking to put a bit of analog technology on your wrist.

• The strap

One of the most important parts about the watch you have to consider when you’re trying to match a watch to the outfit is to look at the strap. A steel bracelet is casual, it’s the kind of thing that goes with jeans and a T-shirt.

A rubber strap is also casual, albeit a little more sporty. It can go with a number of outfits that you can wear day to day.

A leather strap is the most formal, though leather straps alone do not make a watch formal. Many sporty and casual chronographs are fitted with leather straps but are not all that appropriate for more formal settings.

Some watches also come on nylon straps, which are quite informal.

• The style

Building on the above, there’s the style of watch that you’re wearing. For example, if you’re going somewhere formal like a fancy date or a wedding, then you’re going to want to wear a dress watch.

You can identify a dress watch by its simplicity; just the indices or numbers to indicate minutes and hours and the three hands. They’re also fitted on leather straps and are slim enough to slip under your sleeve. Some may have a date window to indicate the day and date.

Other types of watches, like sport watches, are more elaborate. Dive watches will have rotating bezels to better time dives and will have better illumination. Pilot watches will have GMT functions to make it easier to keep track of time zones.

So depending on where you choose to have your date, you need to pick the outfit and the right watch to go with that outfit.

• The movement

When you’re looking at watches, you need to consider the movement. The movement is the heart and soul of the watch, the main mechanism that makes the hands tick. There are three types of movement when it comes to watches: quartz, which use electro-quartz crystals.

Mechanical, or automatic, watches are powered by the movement of the wearer. Manual wind watches are watches that you have to wind as you set the time.

Quartz watches are usually among the cheapest of them and China has a whole lot of quartz-powered watches from local sources that are available pretty inexpensively if you’re looking for something to put on your wrist.

A watch is a work of art.

Apart from the reasons listed above, another reason to wear a watch is simply because a beautiful watch is nice to look at. But don’t look at it too much because it might offend your date.

Watches are a technology that might seem out of place in the modern world. The oldest extant Swiss watchmaking house has been around since 1735. But the fact that they’re still around, and thriving in China, speaks to their staying power. China loves watches and you’d do well to remember that if you’re trying to make any romantic headway in the country.