Teaching Packaging in China

For the past several years I have been teaching professional English for the printing industry at the University of Wuhan, China. I had delivered lectures there while I was president of the NPES, The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies. After retirement, I was asked if I would teach the subject for a 3-month period to which I readily agreed.

I was well prepared because, for 30 years, I had served as the CEO of the association which had offices in -Tokyo, Shanghai, New Delhi, Sao Paulo, and Moscow, and I frequently made presentations about the state of the U.S. printing industry. My entire working life was in the printing industry, one way or another. Of course, printing and packaging are closely related so I was also involved in developments of packaging as they related to the printing aspect of the process. I was not completely surprised when I was asked to teach a 6-week course in the spring of 2008 not only for professional English for the printing students, but also to teach a course for the package engineering students.

I quickly turned to the Packaging Machine Manufacturers Institute (PMMI) for information to supplement my knowledge of the packaging industry and it generously provided me with current statistics concerning the strength of the industry, particularly its growth in the developing countries.

There’s no question that packaging is a growth industry around the world but it is growing at break-neck speed in China. In many cases in the past, a product was produced in China and shipped to customers in North America that performed the final packaging and shipped the product to distributors or the ultimate end user. Today, products are produced and packaged in China ready for store display. Improved printing technologies have helped to make this possible.

After completing my research I sent my lecture notes and PowerPoints to my assistant at the University for subjects such as the global market for packaging, sustainability, environment and the green seal, standards, package design, communication technologies, legal and business terminology, printing techniques, and substrates.

Granted, this was a huge collection of subjects to be delivered in a relatively short time but the dean advised me that they have plenty of technically qualified instructors, but they are not sufficiently up to date on the subjects she wanted me to teach.

Attending college in China is almost exactly the same as it is in the U.S., with the exception of a number of noteworthy differences. Chinese students attend class seven days a week and the semester is 20 weeks versus 16 (typically) in the U.S. The classrooms are neither heated in the winter, which is very cold and damp, nor air-conditioned in the summer, which means it gets very hot!

The students are used to these conditions, and despite the environment, they are studious and very anxious to learn. They have been taught since a very early age to memorize almost everything; when you consider they have to use a minimum of 2,000 characters in everyday communications, the importance of memorizing is understandable. They are highly respectful of their elders and especially of their teachers. I would try to get them to question everything I taught them but they would not rise to the occasion and debate something with me. They are used to accepting what the teacher says and basically keeping to themselves.

I then decided to “force” them to interact with each other by giving them a team project which would ensure they would have to work with their fellow classmates to complete it. The project was to select a product of their choice and create its primary and secondary packaging, write a letter to a supermarket asking them to sample it and stock it, create an animated commercial, and submit the commercial to a local TV station. Although a project of this nature isn’t exactly rocket science, for them it was totally unique.

They formed four different teams and were told to select a team leader who would manage the project. The team leader appointed different people to design the package, design the label, write the letter to the supermarket, create the commercial, and to contact the local TV station. Each were, without realizing it, doing what is involved in preparing a product for market introduction in the U.S. or in any other developed country.

Only after they made their presentations to the class did I reveal why I wanted them to undertake this project. I explained that the creatives designed the package and label, the marketing people worked on the sales letters, and the advertising people worked on the commercial. This is something that is not taught in their regular engineering courses.

The project was a sterling success. While I won’t know for another year or so what these students will do after graduation, I like to think that this Western-style experiment exposed them to something that is totally outside of their regular educational program—something that will make them more valuable to a Chinese packaging company, or even one in the U.S. pP

Regis Delmontagne is a professor in the School of Printing and Packaging at Wuhan University, China and at Beijing Institute. He retired in 2005 as president of NPES, the U.S. trade association for suppliers to the printing and packaging industries. He also served as president of Graphic Arts Show Company and led both groups for almost three decades.