Learn about the top five most important pop culture icons in Vietnam
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Giang: Hello everybody! Welcome to VietnamesePod101.com! I’m Giang. |
| Jason: And I’m Jason! This is the All About Series, Lesson 10 – Top 5 Things you Need to Know about Vietnamese Pop Culture. |
| Giang: In this lesson we’ll look at the top five pop culture topics in Vietnam. |
| Jason: Sounds great. What are they? |
| Giang: Vietnamese television, popular Vietnamese abroad, music, sports, and international pop culture. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Jason: All right. Let’s get started with popular TV in Vietnam. |
| Giang: The largest broadcaster in Vietnam is the Vietnam national television, which is called VTV in short. VTV also operates the largest cable network “VCTV”, and a DTH satellite service. |
| Jason: What are some popular TV programs? What do Vietnamese people like to watch? |
| Giang: Vietnamese people like watching game shows and music contests the most. These shows are on almost every day on Vietnamese TVs. They include Vietnamese shows and those copied from international programs such as “Who wants to be a millionaire”, “The price is right” and “American idol”. |
| Jason: Interesting. So you have Vietnamese versions of these popular shows, right? |
| Giang: Yes, for example, “Vietnam idol” has been the most popular show since 2007. |
| Jason All right, let’s continue with our next topic – popular Vietnamese people abroad. Vietnamese people are most successful abroad in natural science and education. |
| Giang: The most recent is Professor Ngô Bảo Châu. |
| Jason: He is the first Vietnamese mathematician to have won the Fields Medal, which I’ve heard is considered the Nobel Prize of Mathematics. |
| Giang: Yes, he is the greatest pride of our country. The second outstanding person is Professor Võ Đình Tuấn. |
| Jason: He is a bio-medical scientist. He’s been ranked No. 43 on the list of the world’s top 100 living geniuses. |
| Giang: And the third person is Nguyễn Tường Khang. |
| Jason: He is a 12-year-old Vietnamese American, and was invited by a state university in Virginia as a guest lecturer about public speaking skills. |
| He’s only still a kid, but he has become a guest lecturer in a university. Pretty incredible! |
| Giang: He is really a talented person and I’m sure he will be even more successful in the future. |
| Jason: Great. What’s our next topic? |
| Giang: Popular music in Vietnam. |
| Jason: This is an interesting topic. Are pop and rock popular among Vietnamese? |
| Giang: Yes, they are, especially among younger people. Modern pop is the most popular genre of music in Vietnam today. It is highly influenced by Chinese pop, South Korean pop and Japanese pop in both performance and fashion styles. |
| Jason: What about American pop? |
| Giang: American pop is also very popular. After pop comes rock, heavy metal and hip-hop. Bands playing these genres of music tend to become idols, especially among students. Now, the next topic will definitely interest you. |
| Jason: Really? You mean sports? |
| Giang: Yes. Popular sports in Vietnam. Vietnamese people are crazy fans of soccer. |
| Jason: Definitely! Soccer has become part of daily life in Vietnam. Daily sports news cover details of soccer competitions in all parts of the world such as the World Cup, Premier League, Champions League, La Liga, Serie A, etc. |
| Giang: Vietnamese people are extremely excited when the Vietnam national soccer team plays. |
| Jason: You will see news about them any time you turn on the TV and any time you read a newspaper. However, the Vietnamese team doesn’t have a high ranking regionally and internationally. Giang, how about sports besides soccer? |
| Giang: Some other popular sports are volleyball, cycling, table tennis and martial arts. Vietnamese sports that hold a high rank in the international are chess, kungfu and shooting. |
| Jason: All right. And now we are getting to the last topic of this lesson – International pop culture. |
| Giang: Well, the Vietnamese are very up to date on international pop culture because of globalization. We are well aware of modern music, movies, shows, and fashion trends all over the world. |
| Jason: Do you listen to Lady Gaga? |
| Giang: Yes, I like her music and she is very talented. And, many Vietnamese kids can sing her songs. We just had the ‘Vietnam’s got talent’ show and the two cutest performances were a Michael Jackson dance by an 8-year-old boy and Lady Gaga’s “Born this way” sung by an 11-year-old boy. |
| Jason: So, this must mean that whatever is popular internationally is popular in Vietnam too. International culture is getting closer to Vietnamese society and vice versa. The whole world is becoming one global village now. |
| Giang: It’s true. Well listeners, that’s our Top 5 pop culture topics. |
Outro |
| Jason: Yeah, and we hope you had fun learning about Vietnamese culture with this lesson! |
| Giang: We’ll see you again in our next lesson – Top 5 Most Useful Tools for Learning Vietnamese. |
| Jason: Until next time! |
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