Qin Gan grew up in the mountainous city of Chongqing in the 1970s. His father was a well-known local watchmaker. Watchmaking was therefore very much a part of Qin Gan's family home and early life, so it was only natural for him to take an interest in what was certainly a luxury product at the time - he often used his father's tools to create little clockwork gizmos. However, his father was not keen to let his son study the art of watchmaking and he had a good enough reason for it: the Quartz Crisis, which left a deep dent on the Western watchmaking industry in the 1970s, also took its toll on the Qin family far away in China. Electronic and quartz watches quickly flooded the market and it looked as though the days of traditional mechanical watchmaking were numbered. Understandably, no father wanted his child to go down a road that seemed to have no future.
His father passed away quite early – Qin Gan was not even 18 at the time, so he was still young when he found himself having to work for a living, "I had no choice but to drop out of art college and start working. My first job was of an art editor for a newspaper." Later, Qin Gan also landed a job in video advertising. Even though he spent 30 years of his life working different jobs to make ends meet, he never gave up on his passion – exploring and experimenting with precision clockwork mechanisms.
Starting from 2004, Qin Gan began actively participating in horological online discussion forums. However, what set him apart from others, was Qin Gan primary interest was in restoring watches and making his original timepieces. The complications of his own pieces cover from miniature painting, retrograde, petit sonnerie to mechanical automaton.
In 2017, Qin Gan officially registered a brand named after himself and released two works, Patorale I (2021) and Pastorale II (2024). The Chinese name of the watch originates from a poem written by a modern Chinese poet who chose a reclusive and minimalistic life in the Chinese countryside. "I've been fascinated by intricate mechanisms for years, but I eventually opted for a simple three-hand design for my brand's first product."