Ambiguous future of Chinese professional pen spinners

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Most students like to spin pen as a form of self-entertainment to kill time and help with boredom, but few of them would choose pen spinning as a life career. As grown older, the first batch of Chinese pen spinners get real about the dilemma of making a living through their beloved hand sport, Sichuan-based Hongxing News reported Monday.

In 2005, China hardly had any pen spinning videos on the internet. Zhang Jiaxi, a high school student at that time, obsessed with pen spinning by watching videos on overseas websites.

Screenshot of "Home of pen spinners" website

Zhang then decided to set up a website featuring pen spinning. The enthusiast learning coding, graphics editing and website design by himself, launched China’s first pen spinning website – “Home of pen spinners”. The website gathered pen spinners in China, providing an informative introduction, tutorial videos and latest news about the sport.

By now, the website has more than 160,000 registered users. “As a less-popular sport, gathering fanatics together is very important,” Zhang told Hongxing News.

pserhome Photo

Graduated from university in 2011, Zhang found a job related to translation, but pen spinning was always on his mind. Giving up high reward positions, he backed to start-up company based on his website, selling some products related to pen spinning.

Pen spinners across China gathered in south China's Guangzhou Province to participate a competition in July. /Hongxing News Photo

The company, however, barely earn money. Abandoned by his two partners, Zhang is the only one to guard his business now. He is at a loss on whether to continuously run it or give up the company to face the reality.

Zhang is not the only one who hardly earns a living by pen spinning. Although competitions and meetings are sometimes held, such as the World Tournament, a global competition, few people cannot count on the sport to gain income. According to Zhang, there are more than 3,000 Chinese pen spinners who have played it for over six years, yet most of them no longer take this as a career.

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Pen spinning is a form of object manipulation that involves the deft manipulation of a writing instrument with one's hands. The sport comes from Japan and then spread to Asia, Europe and America. Currently, pen spinning websites have set up in more than 30 countries and YouTube has over 341,000 searching result of pen spinning videos.