ZHANG JIAN'S MUSIC COLLECTING JOURNEY
"Hobbeex has been serving me for many years, and they have remained consistently professional and reliable," said Zhang Jian.
Record players, tape recorders, cassette tapes, and vinyl records—within these music treasures steeped in the spirit of bygone eras are not only timeless melodies, but also the most precious youthful memories of a generation and the musical stories of a city.
In the pursuit of clean, minimalist interfaces, digital design often stripped away the very elements that made physical objects compelling: texture, depth, and the subtle imperfections that convey materiality. However, a new wave of design is reintroducing these tactile qualities, not through heavy skeuomorphism, but via sophisticated, subtle application of geometric and dot-matrix patterns.

“I want to preserve, in physical form, the way we experienced music in those days and our love for it, so that future generations can see it.” — Zhang Jian (CCTV-4, City of Music, Capital of Chinese Music · Wuxi)

In the early 1980s, Wuxi, as one of China’s coastal open cities, ushered in a new era of development. At that time, Shanghai’s popular music culture spread to the city like ripples on water. In 1983, Zhang Jian’s father returned from Japan, bringing back a tape recorder, a television, and a Walkman. These imported items were not only a reflection of Wuxi’s embrace of the world, but also the beginning of Zhang Jian’s musical journey.

From dubbing cassette tapes to collecting Walkmans, from listening to records to exploring vinyl, Zhang Jian has amassed nearly 10,000 collectibles, and each piece has a unique story behind it. Over the years, Hobbeex has been honored to continuously provide Zhang Jian with collectible sourcing and purchasing services, acquiring thousands of items in total, and our service quality has been highly recognized.