Pleasant Life in Guangzhou--Record of IS Teacher Walter Reade
Source：国际学院 Date：2014-01-17 Hits：122
On the early morning of Saturday, April 2, 2011, we knocked at the office door of Mr. Walter Reade. He said come in and warmly gave us seats as we asked him for an interview. In his neat office, we started our interview and he answered them with a smile.
Mr. Reade grew up in New York City and graduated from University of Pennsylvania with an MBA and is currently a teacher for classes including Principle of Accounting and Finance Accounting II. His family currently lived in the United States and he has a daughter. In his free time, Mr. Reade likes to travel. He also prefers to make some movies and edit them.
He had been staying in China for three years before moving to Guangzhou and has been living here for another three years. And he decided this is a pleasant place where he wants to stay, but he prefers a smaller, less hectic city. Mr. Reade has ever chosen Shanghai for he thought there are more opportunities to find a good job. During the period in Shanghai, he was offered a job at Normal University. As the weather was bad, he refused and came to Guangzhou as his second trip. He told us that as for travel, he would prefer Shanghai, but as for living, he would say Guangzhou. Although the teacher wasn’t expecting to stay long at first, he now plans to be here for at least another ten years.
He worked as a teacher, a CPA（Certified Public Accountant）, and owned a business when he was in America. He chose accounting because he likes rules. He explained that he worked well with rules and felt comfortable with what accounting gives him. From his point of view, accounting is also a quite demanding job and every place would need it, especially in China.
“I tell my sister how challenging and hard for foreigners to live in China,” Mr. Reade explained about his adjusting to live in China. When he initially came to China, he received friendliness from fellow businessmen, especially in complicated cases like a visit to the hospital or buying expensive things. The teacher mentioned an experience when he went to the supermarket; "I didn’t know where anything was and end up going to the other side of the supermarket to get bread and then realized I had to buy vegetables.” As time went by, our teacher and his friends became more familiar in helping each other and became friends soon. Over the next few years, he was able to learn a couple of things, like bargaining, and could do a couple of interesting things in daily life.
As mentioned above, Mr. Reade is currently a teacher for Principles of Accounting and Finance Accounting II. He also teaches Marketing and E-commerce. From an educational point of view, he found the students here are more challenging than those in US. He also found the students work a little harder as well.
For those who want to be accountants, Mr. Reade suggested "a person needs to be logical, someone who’s good in math, works well with others, and can work out problems. Because accounting isn’t just adding numbers, you have to also understand the dynamics of it."
Written by WU Weiye, ZHANG Lu, LI Hong & Stephanie
Photo by ZHANG Lu
Reviewed by Raewyn