I write from to you from our offices in Hong Kong. Over the weekend we visited Print China 2011 in Dongguan, China. I was blown away by the sheer size of the show and the quality of the Chinese products being offered. From consumables and presses, to software and services. If it had to do with printing it was there. Traditionally these shows have been dominated by companies around the world. And the Chinese products were second to products from other countries. However, things are changing. I'm not saying there's no room for improvement, this trip has changed my mind on what made in China means.
Another thing that surprised me was how warm people were. Not many spoke English. But everyone made a true effort to try to understand me. When I told them I lived in America, they all had good things to say.
At 6'7", I towered over most people at the show. Specially the locals. People kept taking pictures of me everywhere. On the first day of the show, it seemed I kept running into a police officer everywhere I turned. Then he pulled out his camera. That's when I called him and told him we should take our picture together.
Something else that I found very interesting is how much people were talking about G7. Obviously, all the booth that had to do with printing were printing G7 targets. What was surprising was to see manufacturers of digital and conventional presses do the same thing.
Now that I'm back in Hong Kong and with access to blogger I'm able to post my experiences.