And So The Adventure Begins: My first month in Zhuhai

Hi there! My name is Annelies Porreij, hailing from a speck of dust on the world map called The Netherlands. My first month here at ODM was an amazing rollercoaster filled with learning new things and adventures in South China.

Zhuhai view

This is not my first trip to China. I studied in Beijing twice in 2012 and 2014 as a part of my Dutch university major: a Business major with Mandarin Chinese. My previous experiences in China made the transition back into China life and adapting to my surroundings a lot easier. Places like Shanghai and Xi'an have also been ticked off my list, but this is my first time in the south of China.

So far my experience has been great. Zhuhai is a relatively small and green coastal city (especially for me, being used to a huge city like Beijing) and it even has clean air! There's a tropical climate in this part of China, and it almost feels surreal to see palm trees everywhere every day.
It's August, so it's still summer so the weather is very hot and humid. It's raining a lot with an occasional typhoon threat here and there.

Zhuhai Palace

The work at ODM is fast paced and never boring. There are many facets to my daily tasks, from which I am learning so much. After one month, I'm finally getting more used to how things work. My colleagues are all incredibly friendly, passionate people and I felt very welcomed. I'm receiving intensive but interesting training about the ins and outs of this industry.

Zhuhai - Opera House

After my first week, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Yangshuo: famous for their landscape appearance on the ¥20 note. This was a trip that had been on my bucketlist for many years already. It was still a solid 7 hours by bus (+2h because of technical issues, don't even get me started) but the trip was well worth it. The landscapes are beautiful, there is so much to see and to do that 2 days wasn't really enough.


Exciting times lie ahead. I'm looking forward to learning even more and getting more experience in the next three and a half months that I have left. Let's do this!



ODM is opening a new office in Vietnam. Join the team for an amazing work and cultural experience!

Office expansion in Cebu, Philippines

ODMasia has expanded its operations in early 2016 to the Philippines where we currently employing graphic & industrial designers and cold callers. We are constantly looking to add people to our office and work together with our Filipino staff.

Cebu is an Island located in the middle of the Philippines and is a really cultural but beautiful place with beaches, you expect from the Philippines and Indonesia. The water is blue and the world under the water is as wild as above. Sharks, turtles and corals. A paradise for diver and people who love to go into the nature after work.

The life in Cebu is not as touristy, as you might expect from this area of the world, but this also makes the place really interesting and you can really fall into the Filipino culture. The good thing about the Filipino culture is that nearly everyone is able to speak English, which will make your life much easier than in China for example.

Cebu has a lot of tourist attractions. one of it is this Fort San Pedro, which was a military defence base, built by spain. It's located in the area called "Plaza Independencia" which is a busy place, where people hang out and enjoy their free time after work. This place is perfect for meeting people, who are living in Cebu City.

Also worth to see is this street, as this is the oldest street in Cebu City and is just full of culture and will give you an idea about how people live in the Philippines.

Mango and rice is the most traditional food on Cebu and is just delicious and healthy. The fruits and other dishes are all oriented to healthy food with a lot of fruits.

Enjoy your weekends in Cebu with kayaking, swimming with sharks and dolphins and go whale watching around the coast of Cebu.

We are constantly looking for new staff to help us develop our Philippines operations and manage our local team.  Please do get in touch if this might be something you are interested in.

My Month in China!

I arrived in Zhuhai at around 9pm on the last ferry from Hong Kong. It had already been a long journey from Manchester, with a stopover in Dubai, so I am very glad to have arrived. My room was not ready when I arrived, but the guys at Intern China were amazing and I stayed in a hotel for my first night in Zhuhai!

My Month in China!

Zhuhai is definitely one of the most beautiful cities. It is not what I expected China to be like. It is definitely more slowly paced that I expected, with so much greenery and nature.

The day after my arrival, which was a Sunday, I went along my first InternChina event. I met up with some of the other interns at a Beijing Opera Mask painting. It was a lot of fun and a great first introduction for me to Zhuhai and China.

Beijing Mask Painting

I also experienced my first typhoon which was interesting. It actually began on my first day at work. It started with torrential rain, thunder and lightning. The next day the Chinese government announced a code red warning, and we all had to stay at home. So that was quite eventful!

I also went on a trip to Guangzhou with Intern China. It was one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life. We visited so many interesting landmarks in Guangzhou including Lotus Hill Park, Temple of the Six Banyan Trees, Shamian Park and Baiyun Shan as well.

Lotus Hill Park - Guangzhou

Temple of the Six Banyan Trees - Guangzhou

One of the most memorable events was the Night Cruise along the Pearl River. It was an extremely beautiful night, and I managed to get a lot of great pictures.

Night Cruise - Guangzhou

Night Cruise - Guangzhou

My internship has been amazing. My main role is in marketing, and my focus when I first started was writing articles for the main ODM blog. This was a very new for me as I have never written a blog, and now I have picked up a new skill set. I am also doing a lot of work in social media management which includes running one of the Twitter accounts, as well as lots of different types of admin work which has given me a lot of insight into the business and industry.

Thank you so much ODM for this internship, it has been great getting to know you all and I will not forget this experience! And thank you Intern China for this immense opportunity, it really has been life changing!

Hi there,

It's me again. The first month of my internship at The ODM Group is nearly over and I am enjoying it a lot.
In my everyday life in the office I already got some responsibilities for Clients, writing Blogs and Tweets and have always something to do, which I love.
Other interns here in Zhuhai are just hanging around in their companies and spend their day on Youtube and Facebook, but not in mine. We have a lot to do and we never get bored and if so, we are playing ping pong on the desk in the meeting room.

Yesterday I got the opportunity to go to a factory in Dongguan, which is north of Shenzhen, for quality control on a current project of one of our clients.

Me checking the goods at the Factory

It has been a great experience to have a look on this factory, even though it was very very hot and Hume, which makes it a challenge to keep a cool head.
At the Factory: The Factory owner took me out for Lunch before doing the quality control and a nice dinner afterwards, before I got back to Zhuhai. The quality control basically was, as you may could guess, to have a look, if these goods are as high quality as our clients expects them to be.

I'm looking forward to all the tasks, which are waiting for me, here in Zhuhai at The ODM Group.

I will keep you updated.

Kind regards,

Phillip.

First days in Zhuhai, China

Hi there,

I'm Phillip, 21 years old and from Germany. I study Management and Sales for trading companies at the University of applied sciences of Heilbronn in my third year. Currently I just started my 6 month internship at the ODM Group.

I just arrived in Zhuhai 6 days ago and I'm still curios about this place, trying to figuring stuff out.

It's my first time in Asia and I had no idea, what I should expect of Asia or China, but I'm glad I did this. At first I was shocked by this culture and this way of life, but now it is pretty good and I do feel safe in this city.

I already experienced a lot in my first days: asian food, chinese taxi drivers and some hikes through the city and thorugh the chinese jungle outside of Zhuhai with other Interns of Internchina (IC).
I arrived on a Friday and went on that Saturday after that to the hike with IC.

We had a lot of fun at the hike and in the water of the waterfall, even though we didn't found it. It was very hot, probably between 35 and 40°C, we hiked for about 3 hours, which wasn't planned  but gave us the reason, why we enjoyed the pool of the waterfall so much more.  And the nature was great too. I really loved it.

After that the IC organized a great KTV (Chinese karaoke) which was so much fun with the other interns.

The work at the ODM Group is great too. They are a great team with nice people. I really do enjoy it and can strongly recommend to start an internship at the ODM Group and to talk with the IC, as they are providing a great service.

My Experience Abroad Internship and Last Month in Zhuhai.

Now, it's the end of my internship and I can say with confidence that it was really exciting and adventurous experience. Need to say that here at the ODM Group I had got so many new knowledge and skills which I will surely need in my future work life. I learned how to write promotional blog’s, how to make pricing and invoice and find the best product for our clients. Due to this internship I improved my communication skills (how to deal with some not very polite clients). Besides I become better photographer and photoshoper even.

All this will be impossible without great marketing, sales, design and merchandising team. Here at ODM I understood what means the great team work, due to participation in some brainstorm meetings. These guys will always support you and give you advice how best to proceed in a given situation.

Thanks to different tasks every day I was wondering something new and this is really inspires. Three month ago I even can’t imagine I will know so many details about the ways of branding and packaging!

This internship period passed really quickly as I took a chance to travel through the South China. I was visiting the most popular Zhuhai town sights. I was wondered by New Yuan Ming Palace (as I finally found something which looks traditionally Chinese).

And it’s hard to believe but I found fancy place where there was no one but me. Believe me, when you are living in China you begin to consider yourself a sociopath.

Zhuhai locates close to Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. That’s why it is worth to spare your free time on traveling. Fortunately I have visited Macau and Guangzhou. Considering the fact that I am from Russia these cities become the parallel universe for me. That’s why I was really glad to take a chance to work in ODM office which based in Zhuhai.

These cities are great for travelling’s. Due to this I had chance to make sure that China is the country of contrasts and everyone can find here something what he or she likes. The fact that I was never driving crazy about Asia and China at all and it was really difficult for me to take a fancy to China. But thanks to ODM guys I didn’t have to dream about going home every minute of my staying in China.

All Good Things Come to an End - Finishing my Internship

Although this will not be my last time in China, my time in Zhuhai has come to an end (for now), and what an experience this half of my year abroad has been. I can say for sure that I have became more confident in myself, my surroundings and in everything I didn't think I was capable of with working in China an enriched experience and a memorable one at that.

I have had both ups and downs here; my phone getting stolen, impossible to get on crowded buses and constantly being bitten by mosquitoes isn't ideal for starters.. but I have met some amazing people and friends along the way.

I'm very lucky to have spent my time here living with a Chinese family, and can proudly say that I have got a fourth little sister. They have introduced me to some amazing people, families and connections who will not easily be forgotten, letting me create lifetime memories, practice my Chinese and acquire the feeling of knowing that I will see them again next year! 

Although I haven't had the chance to travel as much as I had hoped, I did get the chance to re-visit Hong Kong, go to 海陵岛，and I finally got to visit Guilin, and Yangshuo (with the rain)! Macau will have to wait till next year though.. Here I was able to relive my memories of being by the seaside, eat the best honey ribs, finally eat Lychee (after waiting already for 3 years) and try some of the best seafood, oh and of course getting to appreciate how beautiful China can be away from the buzz of the city life. 

Furthermore, my time at ODM has been an opener to the real working world and how I want my career pathway to be in the future. To be frank when first arriving I wasn't very confident and lacked in certain aspects. Now, I feel that I can deal with problems and achieve goals using the essential skills and experiences that ODM have given me. Sales, marketing, sourcing and project management have all formed a major role in my abilities that I can utilise as my journey continues.

All good things must come to an end they say, but good things never have to end if you don't let them. My positive working experiences will continue to fuel my motivation, and my relationship with my home stay family will never be forgotten (have to see my sister grow up!). I would advise anyone out there regardless of where, to come to China or any other country and learn something new, it changes you and for the better.