About a year or two ago, my Dad started working as a Non-Executive Director of a Chinese company called CAMKIDS, a shop that sells children's outdoor clothing, footwear and equipment. This requires him to pop over to China once a year to attend their AGM and Board meeting, which this year this happened to fall in the first week in June, the week before I left China. Seeing this as a perfect opportunity to give him loads of stuff to carry home for me, we started planning a while back how we could meet up. What I didn't expect was that he'd manage to persuade CAMKIDS to fly me down to Shanghai/Jinjiang and put me up in lovely hotels on the pretext that I was going to act as Dad's translator! Haha

On Monday 2nd June, I packed up a suitcase full of heavy books and boots and got the train down to Shanghai, a mere 6.5hr hour journey. I arrived at the lovely hotel around 10.30pm, just in time for a drink in the bar with Dad and one of the other NEDs, an absolutely hilarious Frenchman called Jacques-Frank.

Tuesday was when I actually did come in helpful, for the first and last time that week. Dad and J-F wanted to spend the day looking around some CAMKIDS stores in order to get an idea of how they were doing, so I went with them, acting as interpreter between them and the shop staff. We went to around 5 stores in total, and it was interesting to hear what the staff said about customer feedback, sales figures, marketing schemes, what they thought about the brand etc. It was fun to put my Chinese skills to good use too, and was quite satisfied with how it all went! That evening, Dad and I had a lovely catch-up with Maggie, one of Dad's former Chinese colleagues from his M&S days.

Wednesday was a bit of a transition day. Dad and I quickly looked around two more stores in the morning, before heading to the airport to get a flight to Jinjiang, a city in Fujian Province in South China. I hadn't heard of Jinjiang before Dad mentioned it, probably because it's most famous for manufacturing shoes, and not much else. My good friend William went to University in Xiamen, just an hour away, and had been to Jinjiang a few times to visit friends there. He warned me it was a pretty dire place; a city that developed very quickly and is now full of rich people, expensive cars and business hotels but devoid of any cultural sights or natural beauty. When we arrived at the airport he seemed to be right - it was disgustingly smoggy, swelteringly hot, and everything from the sky to the buildings to the roads was depressingly grey. Despite this, the few days spent in Jinjiang were really good fun!

After arriving at the airport, we were whisked off in a (thankfully air-conditioned) company car to the CAMKIDS head offices. There, I met the some other senior staff for the first time. The CFO is a brilliant Malaysian lady called Pei-Eng, fluent in Mandarin and English, obviously very sharp and with a cracking sense of humour. The Chief of Sales and Marketing is called Hong Qingming, and happens to also be the son-in-law of the Chairman...! Mr. Hong is quite a character; I really enjoyed chatting to him in Mandarin, and I think I was able to appreciate his sense of humour more than the other NEDs, due to the language barrier. I also met the third NED, a man called Merkel from Malaysia. For an very smart man, he has a very childish, wildly imaginative and often bizarre sense of humour, and a hilarious giggle to match. All in all, a very jolly team! We sat drinking tea together in the offices for a while, before heading back to the Grand Honor hotel to shower and change for dinner.

That night, we ate in the hotel in a private room. It was typically 5* Chinese, i.e. incredibly tacky fake gold/silver furniture, hundreds of clueless, bored staff floating around, and a T.V. screen blaring in the background. The meal was nice though, and it was my first opportunity to meet the Chairman of the company, Mr Zhang. Mr. Zhang is around 56 years old and a Jinjiang local with a thick accent, making it rather difficult to decipher what he said. He was a very kind man - he seem to warm to me quite easily as we could chat without an interpreter, inviting me to come to Jinjiang often. He said he could take me to the hot springs nearby, and, joked (I think) that I could get hitched to his son (25 years old, soldier, millionaire father - could do worse?!).

Thursday began with breakfast in the hotel, in the second-highest revolving restaurant in China. This would have been cool if the view hadn't been so utterly dystopian. Honestly, I feel like if breakfast had been any longer, I might have just thrown myself out of the window by the end of it. Anyway, the AGM kicked off at 9am, and I was allowed to sit in on it. I found it far more interesting than I thought I would, with a few interesting topics up for discussion. What I enjoyed most, though, was being able to understand the discussion in both languages, and identify some of the pitfalls in the translations between the two, which done not by professional interpreters but by Chinese staff members with (near) perfect English. Although their translations were never incorrect, they sometimes chose the wrong bits to paraphrase, or didn't get the tone or emphasis across quite right, which led to a misunderstanding or two.

After the AGM wrapped up, it was time for a quick tour of the factory in the adjacent building, where we were walked through the process of making hiking boots. Then it was time for me to dash off and meet two of William's friends from Music College for lunch at a local restaurant he recommended. I hadn't met either of these guys before, but I thought that if they were friends with Will they were probably lovely, and I was right. We chatted and ate happily for an hour or so, before I was collected by one of the many company cars and dropped off at the hotel, as, understandably, the Chairman didn't want me sitting in on the board meeting in the afternoon. I didn't mind this - I was perfectly happy to laze around in the huge, comfy double bed in my hotel room, a nice contrast to my plank of a bed in Qingdao!

That evening, the Chairman decided he wanted to eat fish by the sea, so at around 7pm the company mini-bus pulled up outside the hotel and all the Board of Directors and I piled in for a little road trip. It was pretty hilarious, it kind of felt like being on a school trip, and the whole thing was made even more bizarre by the strange loop of 90s Chinese pop videos being shown on the TV. The Chairman was loving it though, he would start singing along every now and then. The drive should have taken an hour, but ended up taking almost two, as no one seemed to know where on earth we were going. Thankfully, the food was so good that I think it was worth it in the end. We ate some delicious dishes I'd never tried before, and the atmosphere was far more relaxed and less stuffy than the previous evening. Full of food and beer and feeling rather merry, we piled back into the mini-van and headed home.

Friday was to be our last day in Jinjiang. After a delicious but ridiculously filling breakfast of Dim Sum, we headed back to the offices to attend a morning of presentations from a few departments. First up, the R&D department gave a presentation on some of their exciting new designs, which were really impressive, then the e-commerce department and a few others gave presentations too. Again, it was really interesting from both a content and language perspective. For lunch, we ended up going to the same restaurant I'd been to the day before - the Chairman was impressed I'd been to try some local food and wanted to try some himself! We had yet another delicious meal, the highlight being a melt-in-the-mouth donkey dish. After lunch we went to go and have a brief look at a potential site for the new factory. This wasn't particularly exciting, but it meant a good 20-minute drive in the front seat of Mr. Hong's Maserati, so I was happy ;)

The rest of the afternoon was ours to use as we pleased, so after a quick rest I decided to go and have a foot massage. A foot massage was what I got, in the end, but let's just say that it wasn't what I was offered at first, if you get what I mean…!

When William was warning me about Jinjiang, he did mention that it was known for its 'special services', but my, I wasn't expecting that.

For our final evening together, Mr Hong decided to take us to one of his favourite hang outs. The Chairman wasn't joining us, and Mr Hong had obviously decided that we were relaxed enough to be taken to a slightly shabbier location for dinner - a sort of beer/BBQ place on the street. Despite the simple location, the food was incredible, and it was definitely the most fun evening of the whole week. The beer was flowing and I decided (having refrained from drinking the whole week) to give in and drink too. We ended up playing drinking games and it was all very banterous and a bit raucous. The driver, who was eating with us, seemed to find the whole situation hilarious, and also enjoyed gently teasing me the next morning, when he picked up Dad and I at 5am, both with splitting headaches…

Dad flew home the next day from Xiamen airport, whereas my flight back to Qingdao wasn't until the day after, so I had a day to look around Xiamen. I was looking forward to this as I'd heard lots of good things about the city, but sadly due to a) the monsoon-like rain and b) my hangover, I didn't get to see as much as I'd have liked. I managed a gentle wander through the University area, past the Nanputuo temple, and I met up with Freddie (who happened to be in Xiamen too - fate!) and his friend Serena for lunch, which was lovely. I wandered up and down one of the main roads in the evening, picking up some tasty street food for dinner, before collapsing into my hostel bed nice and early, ready for another 5am start the next morning.

All in all, it was a fantastic week. Obviously it was lovely to see Dad again, having not seen him since November, but it was also really interesting to get an insight into how a Chinese company works and how business is conducted in China. Also met some real characters and was wined and dined every night - what's not to like?!