The Execution of Mayor Yin (1978)

Chen Ruoxi's stories of the Cultural Revolution, drawn from her own years in China after leaving Taiwan, appeared in English in 1978 in the translation by Nancy Ing and Howard Goldblatt (Wikipedia); the scanned copy is the 2004 revised edition with an introduction by Perry Link. In "Geng Er in Beijing", called "Geng Er in Peking" in the first edition, a scholar who gave up a life in America to serve the new China falls in love with a textile worker's daughter. (Open Library)

Watches

Omega (unidentified model): In "Geng Er in Beijing", the day after Xiao Qing's parents welcome him to their home, Geng Er skips supper and cycles from work to a department store, where he spends the equivalent of three months' salary on an Omega as an engagement gift for her. Xiao Qing, who gives most of her forty-two yuan a month to her family, has been saving for two years to buy a watch made in Shanghai and does not like him spending money on her; the Cultural Revolution arrives before they can marry. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: The next day Geng Er skipped supper and rode his bicycle right from work to a department store where he spent the equivalent of three months' salary on an Omega watch as an engagement gift for Xiao Qing. (Chen Ruoxi, The Execution of Mayor Yin, scan cataloged as Indiana University Press revised edition, 2004, p. 154, in "Geng Er in Beijing", which runs from p. 139 in this edition; her savings plan is on p. 155; Internet Archive scan OCR)