Andrew Vadas

PRS Radio

On this episode, I speak to Andrew Vadas, a North-Shore Sydney Gentleman, of Hungarian descent who has lived in Shenzhen (Shekou) for nearly 16 years arriving in 2004. Andrew decided to torture himself by supporting St.Kilda's, a Melbourne based team in the AFL.. A shocking decision; let's hope his decision to come on the podcast is a better one...... We hear about his life growing up in Sydney; pursuing the great Australian dream of wife, family, car, house and business and how he achieved all this by the age of 25, yet how his real passions including music fell by the wayside in the process. After his divorce, Andrew suddenly was presented with an opportunity to move to China ("where?") and how he seized this opportunity with both hands and reaped the benefits, both personally and professionally. Andrew has experiences the highs and lows that China has to offer; he speaks candidly about doing business within China and some of the pitfalls involved including a cautionary tale about a friend who lost $6 Million in a deal gone bad. We hear about his love of taxi driving and where this stems from and some of the interesting experiences he had while driving in Sydney. We somehow manage to relate taxi driving to the need of expats to develop a support network when to move to Shenzhen! Andrew has rambled along the pathways of China this last 16 years and has many tales to share with us including how he resurrected his musical career in Shekou. Being an expat in China can be a challenging experience and not everyone is cut out for it to be honest. We talk about this and how being out of your comfort zone and having no support network in place can lead to personal problems for people moving to Shenzhen. We hope you enjoy the show and please share with your friends and rate the show in Apple Podcasts/Google Podcasts. The full uncut extended episode can be found here on Youtube. You can find me on Twitter @EugLeonard and you can follow PRS Radio using the #PRSradioSZ You may also be interested in a new show I have about the SDG's (Sustainable Development Goals) and this is also available on Anchor https://anchor.fm/sdgagencysz Thank you Andrew Vadas for joining us on PRS Radio; an absolute gentleman.