A Home in Hanoi

 
 
 
Bao invites viewers into his home.

Vocabulary

glad	welcome	introduce
eldest	bow (2)	present (3)
arrow	container	make/made/made
ethnic	minority	give/gave/given
enemy	against	fight/fought/fought
used to	kind (2)	good/better/best
look at	like (2)	for example
rear	crossbow	old/older/oldest
typical	pagoda	dangerous
free (3)	pleased	from the time when
team	schnaps	glutenous
rice	drink (2)	for instance
distill	free time	until next time
put in	special	just about
taste	weapon	back then
dead	object (2)	drink/drank/drunk

 
 
 
 
 

Video

 
 
 
 

Transcript

Hanoi, Vietnam. It is Southeast Asia’s most ancient capital.

Hello. I’m very glad to welcome you to our home. Please come in.

My name is Bao. Nguyen Tuan Bao. This is our house. I’d like to introduce my wife, Kan. We’ve lived in this house for 40 years. My eldest son lives above us, and my youngest below us.

The Magic Crossbow of Vietnam

This is a crossbow. An ethnic minority, the Whan Bin from Moan made it.

They gave me the weapon as a present when I visited Whan Bin. In Vietnamese history, we’ve often fought against enemies from the outside. A crossbow like this used to be a very dangerous weapon.

In our home we have lots of pictures that I like very much. This one here for instance tells us something about Vietnamese history.

The object at the rear of the painting is the Dao Pagoda, one of the oldest pagodas in Vietnam. And there’s a typical Vietnamese market.

Herr Bao studied in Germany.

In our free time we like to look at photos from the time when we were in Germany. That’s me. I was also in a football team back then.

Chu Dao ceramic art.

This is our schnaps container. Just about every Vietnamese family has one like this. Schnaps is distilled from glutenous rice in Vietnam. We also put in a special kind of Vietnamese apple into it. The older the schnaps, the better it tastes.

We drink it with our meals on holidays like New Years or Day of the Dead.

We’re really pleased that you visited our family. Good bye until next time.

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Questions

1. Bao and Kan are 40 years old. What do you think?

2. Do they have close family ties? How many levels or stories is his house?

3. Someone gave Bao a smartphone as a gift. Is this right or wrong?

4. Is the crossbow a toy, a decoration or a lethal weapon?

5. What does the painting show?

6. What happened when Bao was younger?

7. Is making _schnaps_ new, or is it a custom, a tradition in Vietnam? What is the Vietnamese schnaps made of? Is new, fresh schnaps is the best?

8. People drink schnaps every evening, after work. Is this correct or incorrect?

 
 

A. Do you or your friends have any paintings? What kind of paintings do you or your friends have?

B. Do you or your friend have a schnaps collection?

C. Have you or your friends studied abroad? If yes, where?

D. Are you from Vietnam? Do you live in Vietnam? Have you ever been to Vietnam?

E. Have you met people from Vietnam? Who were they? What were they doing?

F. Describe the climate and geography of Vietnam.

G. Describe Vietnam’s economy. What does Vietnam produce, import and export?

H. What problems does Vietnam face?

I. What is Vietnamese food like?

J. What are some tourist attractions (cultural, historical, natural)?