A: Welcome to VOV’s Letter Box. This feature airs every Wednesday. This week, we’ll begin with a letter
from Daniel Toth, a 24-year-old student of economics from Slovakia who is studying at the University of Edinburgh. Though he only began listening to VOV last December, when he got his first short-wave radio, he has known about Vietnam since he was little.
B: Daniel writes that he first heard about Vietnam from Vietnamese people who came to Slovakia as students or workers and decided to stay. He ‘met Vietnamese at the market selling shoes or clothing…..and always admired their modesty and simple, quiet way of life.’
A: We’re happy that now, through Radio the Voice of Vietnam, you’ll have an opportunity to learn more about our S-shaped nation. So welcome, Daniel Toth, to the English program. We’ll send you a hard copy of our frequencies and program schedule, but there’s a faster way to learn about us, and that’s to log on to our website at www.vovworld.vn, then select English to see details.
B: But you know, we also have 11 other languages to choose from. I hope you know more than one foreign language! As for your request for the names of the artists and song we played on February 17th, the song was ‘The communal house of coastal villages’ performed by a girl band called ‘The Red Sun’.
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| The communal house of Mong Phu village in Son Tay town, Hanoi (Photo: Internet) |
A: The song features the Vietnamese communal house. The lyrics say ‘the communal house is the soul, the happiness, and the sadness of the Vietnamese people.’ Every village in Vietnam has a communal house which has witnessed the activities, the principles, and the social changes of Vietnam’s rural population through the centuries.
B: ‘The Red Sun’ also known as ‘The New Sun’ is a band of five female artists whose performances combine contemporary folk music with traditional musical instruments and a performing style that’s very modern.
A: You’re listening to VOV’s Letter Box, broadcast every Wednesday. The song you just heard was about Spring with lyrics set by Ca Tru, Vietnam’s ceremonial singing believed to be a path for the Vietnamese soul and performed by the Red Sun. Daniel, I hope you enjoyed this tune!
B: Another new listener to VOV we would like to welcome is Dibyendu Madhab Das of West Bengal, India. He just tuned in to the Voice of Vietnam early this year, though according to him the sound was not clear enough. We don’t know why your reception wasn’t good. We’ll send you our frequency list and program schedule so you can choose the best frequency for your location. Dear Dibyendu, we have a lot of listeners in the Indian state of West Bengal and they have reported fine reception so far, except when the weather is unfavourable.
A: We’ll do our best to answer your requests for a frequency list and program schedule and whenever you send us a listening report for a certain day, we’ll confirm your listening by a QSL card. So keep in touch, and enjoy listening to VOV!
B: Dibyendu, there’s one more thing I want to remind you about: you can log onto our website at www.vovworld.vn to see our schedule and listen to our broadcast audio files before our packages arrives!
A: This week, listeners continued to send us letters confirming that they received our New Year gifts, calendars, and QSL cards. We’re very happy to know that our packages arrived at the right addresses. Robert Krolikowski of Perry, New York, USA for example, and Otto Schwartz of Calabash, NC, USA.
B: Otto is one of our loyal listeners but recently he can’t listen to us much and rarely writes letters to us. But he wrote that he ‘feels somewhat guilty and got a pleasant surprise’ when he received a ‘beautiful calendar’, his words.
A: Dear Otto, don’t worry; we understand the reasons. The most important thing is you finally tuned in again on January 29th and heard the program on 9640 KHz at 2.30 to 3.30 UTC. Otto reported almost every detail of that program, from domestic news to world events and current affairs, our Land feature and People feature. He expressed a particular interest in the Land segment which was about a flower village in the Central Highlands city of Da Lat, because he loves flowers.
B: Otto said his yard is filled with flowers almost all year long - azaleas, camellias, daffodils, irises, cannas, lilies of the valley, and passion flowers. Otto also listened to the Spanish and German programs on VOV. We’ll tell those two sections so they can add your name to their list of listeners.
A: Otto sent us several newspaper and magazine articles dealing with Vietnamese topics in the US. We see a Buddhist Pagoda has opened near your house in Wilmington. You should attend some events held by the pagoda to get to know the cultural identity of Vietnamese people.
B: Vietnamese visit pagodas or temples to pray for good health, good luck, and wealth when spring comes, on the first and the fifteen day of every lunar month, and whenever they want to find a calm place for themselves.
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| Vietnamese girls in traditional long dresses visit pagodas (Photo: Internet) |
A: Visiting pagodas on these occasions is a deep-rooted tradition. In Vietnam, the custom is described as ‘Le chua’ in which ‘Le’ means not just visiting but also showing respect in all sincerity to Buddha or the Gods of the pagoda or temple. No matter how busy Vietnamese are during Tet, they find time to burn an incense to pray for blessings in the New Year.
B: Every week we salute listeners like Ken Godfrey, a high school Spanish teacher in Beaumount, California, USA, Muralidhar of Rajajinagar, Bangolore, India, and Avijit Mondal of West Bengal, India. They’re just a few of the listeners who sent us postal or electronic mails this week.
A: All these listeners sent reports of the English programs they heard and comments about technical issues and program contents. We greatly appreciate this feedback. Dear listeners, your reception reports were all complete enough for us to send you letters of confirmation. If your name wasn’t mentioned this week, don’t feel left out. We’ll try to acknowledge you next time.
B: That’s it for today’s Letter Box. Please keep in touch. We look forward to receiving your comments and suggestions. Our contact address is:
The English program,
Overseas Service, Radio Voice of Vietnam,
45 Ba Trieu Street, Hanoi, Vietnam
B: Or you can email us at: englishsection@vov.org.vn. If you miss any of our programs, you can always catch up by logging onto our website at: www.vovworld.vn, where you can hear both live broadcasts and previously recorded programs.
Bao Tram