There is no experience quite like writing with a good fountain pen. Holding one in your hand makes you want to write huge amounts of big flowery script. Fountain pens are refillable, allow you to use an array of gorgeous ink, can often be customized, and will last longer than you will if properly maintained. But like many niche hobbies, pens can be a sinkhole people compulsively dump money into, particularly on the high end. And like many niche hobbies, that ecosystem has been upended by new, competitive companies from China, often (but not always) creating stylistic clones of existing pens. The clones have gotten progressively better over the years to the point where they sometimes match or even improve on the pen they are duping for a fraction of the price.
Before diving into Chinese pens, it should first be acknowledged that you do not need to spend a ton of money on a good fountain pen. Vendors like Jet Pens and Goulet Pens have pens at every price point you could want. German pens like the Kaweco Perkeo or Sport and LAMY Safari are reliable and affordable beginner fountain pens. Muji makes a fantastic metal fountain pen. The Kaweco Sport in particular is a perfect pen to throw in your bag without worrying about it breaking, and I’m quite fond of the sturdy brass and aluminum variants. Patronizing a local pen and stationary store can be a rewarding experience, allowing you to try out many models and inks to find one that truly speaks to you. Unfortunately, with some exceptions like Jinhao, many Chinese pens just were not available to me through a local pen store. Many of the new vendors' pens can only be purchased in the West on Amazon, Etsy, Ebay and Aliexpress (or Taobao and Alibaba if you do a little leg work).
When looking up reviews of Chinese fountain pens on YouTube and Reddit, I kept hearing one refrain: these pens were shockingly good for the price. Brands like Jinhao, Hongdian, Delike, WingSung, Asvine, and PenBBs all have great offerings at an affordable price point. Sometimes those pens are an original design, but often they are thinly veiled duplicates or copies or remixes of popular, existing pens. Many of the copies are not exact, and some of the pens being copied are decades old. Not all affordable Chinese pens have perfect quality control, but this is also largely true for expensive pens from legacy brands. Some people are conflicted on this either ethically or from the perspective of simple manners, but the fact of the matter is these pens are shockingly good, and they’re here to stay.
You can spend an entire article just going over Chinese pens and the pens they bear a striking similarity to. r/fountainpens on reddit maintains not just a list of solid Chinese fountain pens, but also a two part guide to them. I spent weeks digging through YouTube to see side by sides of countless models. There’s the Majohn X1 vs. Montblanc Boheme, the Wingsung 699 vs. the Pilot Custom 823, the Jinhao Centennial vs. the Parker Duofold Centennial, The Jinhao X159 vs. the Montblanc 149 and the Majohn A1/A2/A3 vs. the Pilot Vanishing Point. It should be pointed out that not all Chinese pens are clones, and almost none of the clones are pretending to be the original but merely aping the style – a minor but meaningful distinction. Furthermore, stylistically cloning a pen is not uncommon or new; one needs only compare the Sailor 1911 to the Montblanc 146. That said, some of the clones are so close, parts can be used interchangeably from the originals.
Diving in
When I started looking into the deep rabbit hole of Chinese pens, I wanted to start with something familiar. My favorite ballpoint/mechanical pencil is the german-made rOtring 600, a sturdy metal design with a grippy, aggressive knurling that resembles an X-ACTO knife more than a writing implement. Eventually I stumbled upon the Hongdian 1861, often called the “Black Forest” or “Dark Blue Forest” depending on the color. The 1861 “Forest” series is loved by a lot of people: a sleek industrial design that bears a resemblance to the Otto Hutt Design 04. Hongdian was relatively unknown as a brand until a few years ago, but the Black Forest is also one of the top selling pens on Amazon, with more than 26,000 largely positive reviews as of this writing. Reddit reactions are glowing, although some people have complained that the finish on the pen wears a little over time. It retails somewhat on the higher end for Chinese pens, roughly $17 (although it apparently used to be far less expensive) and comes in a dizzying array of colors, including a garish iridescent color that looks like a gravity knife you’d buy at a rural gas station. I bought the Dark Blue Forest with a matching blue nib.
The pen’s popularity is justified. The 1861 is sturdy but not overly heavy, writes beautifully, and does not feel like it is going to spill ink over the inside of my bag. The knurling is actually quite smooth, only slightly grippy. The cap slides off instead of twists off and makes a satisfying pop when removed from the far end of the pen. It’s unobtrusive and thin enough to slip in the rings of a spiral notebook. It’s a pen that punches well above its weight, as does the Hongdian M2. There are better pens out there, but you could buy a Black Forest and not buy another pen for a very long time.
Unfortunately, I was now hooked, and had a thinly-veiled justification of writing this article.
After the Blue Forest, I went on a pen shopping spree on Aliexpress. There was the titanium Asvine V200, a weighty “demonstrator” pen that a friend said “looked like it came out of Resident Evil.” There was the inexpensive Majohn Wancai Mini V2, one of the smallest pens I have ever seen. There was also the Jinhao 82, which bore a striking resemblance to the Sailor Pro Gear Slim as well as the Majohn A2 (about $16-$17), which looked very similar to the iconic Pilot Vanishing Point ($168) – a pen that clicks like a ballpoint. There was also the Majohn/Delike Hunyuan, a clean, weighty and industrial metal pen that comes in either smooth brass or black knurling. I got the black variant, have filled it with red ink, and refer to it as my “evil” pen. I bought a couple of Jinhao Sharks, very inexpensive pens that I have given away to friends already. And lastly, I purchased a Hongdian M2 – one of the most beautiful pens I have ever used.
What strangers on the internet had said was true: All the pens performed beautifully and were worth more than what I paid for them. Everyone who gets these pens seems to love them, but who makes them? Where do they come from?
Untangling the world of Chinese Pens
Chinese fountain pen brands are much harder to nail down than other companies. A few appear to be based in Shanghai, with the Shanghai Hero Pen Company being one of the oldest and most storied. Hero even apparently attempted a collaboration with the storied American brand Parker back in the late 70s. Jinhao has also been around for a while, and they make a lot of pens that run the gamut in cost, quality and complexity. The aforementioned Jinhao Shark is a beloved pen within the pen community because it is cheap, plastic, writes fairly well, and looks like a shark (the injection point for the cap looks like a belly button). You can hand them out to a stranger as a gift and think nothing of it. It won’t win any awards for reliability, but it’s roughly 2 to 4 dollars so you can buy them in bulk if you want to test out a bunch of inks or easily gift them to someone to potentially spark a love of fountain pens. Jinhao also has a similar model shaped like a swan where the bird's bill adorably forms a little clip.
I tried contacting every Chinese pen brand I could within reason. The company that owns the Jinhao brand, Shanghai Qiangu Stationery Co., was easy to contact, and they provided me with a catalog of their offerings (both the Jinhao brand, as well as a sub-brand Baoer). Further investigations into other Chinese brands got murky, as it became unclear which company produces what brand and who is simply reselling pens made from different companies. To some degree this is understandable, as a newer Chinese brand might simply not have a Western-facing presence on the internet. But there are strange overlaps in what brands sell what, and who sells who, and even people on pen forums seem to only have incomplete information. Many of the brands have stores on Taobao. In the West, PenBBS operates mainly on Etsy and shares a name with a popular Chinese pen forum of the same name. Hongdian appears to be the brand of the Lishui Lantian Pen Company, but the email associated with the company did not respond to any inquiries and I was unable to confirm this from them directly.
What originally had sparked my curiosity about these brands was a years old r/hobbydrama thread about a territorial dispute involving the German brand Kaweco and the Chinese brand Moonnman (now Majohn). According to the thread, the owner of the brand Kaweco, cosmetics company Gutberlet GmbH, filed a trademark for the brand Moonman in the EU. The thread goes on to state that Kaweco cited similarities between the Majohn T1 and the Kaweco Sport (a pen that was invented in 1911). Say what you will about Chinese copies, of which there are many blatant examples, but you would never mistake the two pens for each other save for some minor similarities in the cap (other people in the pen world noted this at the time as well). In the end, Kaweco kinda ended up looking like the dick bullying the new guy. The Shanghai Shanyin Trading Company, which claims to be the producer of the Majohn brand, confirmed this information, although I am still not certain that they are the main producers of the brand based on conflicting information I have found online. Kaweco did not respond to multiple inquiries I sent them.
I have a deep love of finding out where the objects I use are made, to the point where it’s become a bit of a game for me. Kaweco loves touting out their beautiful, elegant production process, their logo proudly states “Germany, since 1883,” despite the brand’s relatively new ownership. But many of these pens are their equal and deserve an opportunity to earn a legacy of their own.
Inking Up
After I spent some time with my Chinese pens, I made sure to visit Yoseka Stationery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. If you’ve never been, it’s a gorgeous store, bustling with pen nerds excited to try out different pens on the weekend. It’s overflowing with beautiful notebooks and countless bottles of ink. Though I already had a bottle of blue Pilot Iroshizuku, I wanted to expand my selection, so I bought a beautiful emerald from Sailor and a beautiful red that Yoseka makes called Qing Shan Hu.
While waiting in line to buy the ink, I told some people that I was writing an article on Chinese pens. I showed my bounty of weird Aliexpress pens. One woman I talked to mentioned she was aware of Jinhao, particularly everyone’s favorite Shark, but was taken aback at how well the Dark Blue Forest performed. I had expected a bit of apprehension on the topic of clones and copies, but pen enthusiasts are fairly easygoing and love an excuse to try a new pen out, particularly when it’s well made. They all agreed – these were good pens.
I have spent far too much time over the last month thinking about pens, and have more questions than I do strong convictions. To what degree does originality in design matter relative to craftsmanship? Is imitation an unforgivable crime, or a natural progression that most companies go through as they develop their own style? And how much does any of this matter if it gets a new person to step in the door of a stationary store and reignite a love of writing by hand? Isn’t an affordable pen that gets someone into the hobby, like the Jinhao Shark, ultimately a good thing for the fountain pen world?
Of the pens that I have bought, I think the most about the Hongdian M2. Though the M2 has a vaguely similar form factor to the Kaweco Sport, its shape is different – round instead of faceted. The M2 is a beautiful pen: pocketable and sturdy with a solid nib, in muted iphone-like aluminum tones for about 20 bucks. I get the sense that I could carry it with me forever, and there’s a nonzero chance I will. Maybe one day I’ll lose it on the train, or maybe I’ll give it to a friend as a gift. At the current price, there’s little harm in giving it away.
The M2 feels a step above a clone or a slight revision; it feels like something new. I gravitated towards it as well as the Dark Blue Forest and the evil-looking Delike Hunyuan for that reason. I am certain these new brands are good enough to stand on their own, to be exhibited in a beautiful and bustling stationary store instead of being relegated to countless nameless sellers on Aliexpress, Amazon and eBay. I want to see what new designs they come up with, instead of simply recreating pens from 100 years ago. The world has gotten bigger, the winds are changing, and the world of pens is no different.
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