Day 6 – Meeting Alumnus Dr. Michael Sun

May 20, 2017

Today we started our day quite early as we had a long ride to the mill from our hotel in Nanjiang. As usaul, our tour guide Steve delivered another lesson about China, and the topic was, the Chinese population. During the 1900s, China’s population ballooned from 400 million to 700 million in only a short period of time. This was proliferated by Mao Zedong’s vision of “big population, strong nation”, as he encouraged the country to massively increase its population. This growth eventually became unsustainable and the government initiated the 1 child policy in 1980. This began to have significant effects on the family dynamics of the Chinese people, as many things changed in response to the policy. Now in China, due to the favoring of having a boy, with the choice of one child, there is a large imbalance in the gender ratio that still persists today. Steve’s lessons always gave great context of this country.

Dr. Michael Sun an NCSU Alumni…someone we will never forget

Once we finally arrived at our destination, Sunchem, we were greeted by its founder, Dr.Michael Sun. Dr. Sun is an incredible individual, who is incredibly smart, hardworking and overall talented, and is truly an inspiration to anybody. He is a graduate from NC State receiving a PhD. from the university and went into consulting pulp and paper companies. After some time he decided that he wanted to go in a different direction, and took on the task of creating a process for the manufacturing of release paper, a central component in the creation of synthetic leathers. At first, he thought this would be a simple endeavor, but as he often reminded us, he was sorely mistaken.

The reason he decided to go in this direction was because no one in China has the capability of making release paper, it was an open market for him especially, since 80% of synthetic leather is made in China. Also he was the perfect man for the job since creating this process requires a plethora of technical chemical knowledge that few possess. Additionally, many have tried and failed before him to achieve the goal he had in mine. Even with him possessing all the  necessary skills to create this process of electron beam curing, which dries paper instantly, it still took numerous hours and trials to get it running. In the Product development stage of the super gloss alone, he ran 2728 lab tests, 102 production trials, and 780 consumer site trials. This absurd development was completed by working 8-12 hour days, every day. This type of work ethic is what made Dr. Sun such an inspiration and made it clear why it was no issue for him to gain investors in his vision. He is a successful man that has overseen Sunchem grow to a company with 40 customers and about 3 million in revenue.

After Dr. Sun’s presentation, he took us on a mill tour. The machine is rather small as it only performs coating operations as he purchases the base paper from American companies to turn into his release paper. The mill floor is a renovated warehouse that he bought, and he more or less, built the machines from scratch since many of the machines he purchased were in poor condition. The place was incredibly clean and quiet and there were only a few technicians on the floor to keep everything going.

Next on the agenda was Old Town, once again hosted by Dr. Sun. We drove over there as a group and he continued his awesome treatment. When we arrived not only was a tour guide present to take us into an aged Chinese town, but there was also a camera crew and Special Forces to keep us safe! It may have been over the top but it was definitely an invaluable sign of hospitality. Old town was rich in culture with plenty of street vendors selling quality items for low prices, and many of the students bought pearls.

Nanjiang Forestry University

The last event in our day was to visit Nanjiang Forestry University, and it was conveniently right next to our hotel. It’s an old university that was celebrating its 115^th anniversary. The university has 22 majors and 6 key disciplines available to students. The university has a focus on International Cooperation and Scientific Research. In regards to its exchange program, the University has relationships with many universities around the world, and they send their students to gain a broader understanding of their topics. With us in the presentation room were some of the students from the university who were also studying pulp and paper, and we were given time to socialize and interact with them. We were able to learn a lot about them, China, and what they thought about America. To my surprise there were a lot of Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift fans amongst them. Just goes to show the reach of western popular culture. This social segued into a tour of the student’s campus and they walked us through their school on our way back to our hotel.

Dinner was had at another hotel after we were given some time to freshen up after a long day. This dinner was hosted by Nanjiang Forestry University, and we were served even more unique cuisines. The activity for the night was KTV, a popular Chinese activity consisting of karaoke in private rooms. The whole group had a room to ourselves, and everyone came out to have a good time singing and laughing.

by guest blogger Russell Aryeetey and Landon Deberry