LISTENING LESSON 03 - BRUCE LEE - LY TIEU LONG (04112018)

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28/9/2018
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1. BASIC LISTENING


BRUCE LEE - LÝ TIỂU LONG

(MUSIC: A Maiden's Love - Nu Er Qing - Tình Nữ Nhi)

Our listener question this week comes from Israel. Rafi Halabbi asks about actor Bruce Lee (Lý Tiểu Long).

His name was Lee Jun Fan Yuen Kam (Lý Chấn Phiên) when he was born in San Francisco, California in nineteen-forty. A nurse at the hospital said he should have an American name too. She suggested the name “Bruce.” Bruce’s father was a movie actor. Young Bruce appeared in his first movie with his father when he was only two months old. Bruce and his parents returned to their home in Hong Kong in ninety-forty-one. Bruce began to act in Chinese movies at the age of six.

In Hong Kong, Bruce Lee began his life-long interest in the Chinese system of self-defense called Kung Fu. He studied with Yip Man (Diệp Vấn), a master of the famous Wing Chun Kung Fu (Vịnh Xuân Quyền). Bruce was also involved in many street fights. His parents decided this must stop. They sent him back to the United States. He became a student at the University of Washington in Seattle. Later he opened a school to teach Kung Fu in Oakland, California.

Bruce Lee was not a big man. However, people who saw him fight could not understand how he could be so powerful. He seemed to have the strength of several men.

(MUSIC: A Maiden's Love - Nu Er Qing - Tình Nữ Nhi)

In nineteen-sixty-six, Bruce Lee acted in an American television series called “The Green Hornet.” The program was not a success. But many Hollywood movie actors began studying Kung Fu with him. He appeared in several other television programs.

Bruce Lee returned to Hong Kong in nineteen-seventy-one to act in a Chinese movie known in the United States as “Fists of Fury” (Tinh Võ Môn, phát hành tại Châu Á). The movie was extremely popular in Asia. He followed this with another film, “The Chinese Connection” (Tinh Võ Môn, phát hành tại Mỹ). It too was extremely popular.

In nineteen-seventy-three, Bruce Lee made his most famous movie, “Enter the Dragon” (Mãnh Long Quá Giang). It was the first movie made in cooperation between American and Chinese movie companies.

But Bruce Lee died a few weeks before the movie was released. He was thirty-two years old. Doctors said his death was caused by swelling of the brain.

More than twenty-thousand people attended his funeral in Hong Kong before his body was taken to Seattle, Washington for burial. “Enter the Dragon” became a major hit. It made Bruce Lee an internationally famous movie star. Movie critics say his early death ended what would have been a very successful movie career.

(MUSIC: A Maiden's Love - Nu Er Qing - Tình Nữ Nhi)

2. ADVANCED LISTENING


VIETNAM HELMET LAW CHANGES CULTURE OVERNIGHT


The sound of a Vietnamese city is the sound of motorbikes. In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, motorbikes account for more than 90 percent of all the vehicles on the road.

But for decades, most Vietnamese riders refused to wear helmets, which they derisively call "rice cookers". Traffic safety advocates wondered what it would to change people's behavior.

On Saturday, they got their answer.

Traffic police officer Nguyen Ngoc Hieu says according to Government Decree Number 32, from December 15, everyone riding a motorbike anywhere in Vietnam, including passengers and children, must wear a helmet. He says the government is doubling the traffic police force to more than 1,000 officers to enforce the new law.

Hieu spoke Friday at the entrance to Hanoi's Long Bien bridge, one of the busiest intersections in the city. It was the day before the new law took effect, but at most, only a quarter of the riders were wearing helmets.

Nguyen Van Hoa, a public security official at the People's Committee in the Hanoi neighborhood of Ba Dinh, says the helmet campaign is going slowly. Hoa says at one local primary school, many parents hadn't bought helmets for their children. He says this had made officials angry.

Meanwhile, the sidewalks of Hanoi are crowded with helmet vendors doing a brisk trade as people try to comply with the new law.

Longtime helmet shop owner Nguyen Nga Thao says her sales are up more than 10 times, to about 2,000 helmets a day.

Thao says helmets have become much more fashionable since September, when the new law was announced. The new ones are lighter, with designs such as hibiscus flowers and panda faces, for female riders who would not have bought a helmet before.

Nguyen Thi Bao owns Ba Café, a fashionable coffee shop. She says she just bought her first helmet, a green Piaggio model, to match her green Piaggio motorbike.

Bao says she would still prefer not to wear one. With such beautiful hair, she says, how can I wear a helmet when I go out at night?

Government Decree Number 32 took effect at six o'clock Saturday morning. By noon, it was clear that compliance rates were more than 99 percent. In one night, Hanoi's streets had become a sea of brightly decorated motorbike helmets.

Dang Van Binh, 52, has driven a "xe om", or motorbike taxi, for 13 years.

Binh says in the entire morning, he had seen only a few drivers without helmets. He says several were stopped by police and fined - 150,000 dong, or about $9, more than the price of a cheap helmet.

Le Huong, 25, was wearing a helmet for the first time.

Huong said she still thought helmets were ugly, and was only wearing them because of the law.

Then Huong's friend Hong, who was driving the motorbike, explained in English.

"The government, they approved for all the people to follow, and we are Vietnamese and we are the good ones, so we follow," said Hong. "We are Vietnamese, and we love our country. So we follow our government."

Matt Steinglass - Hanoi

Composed & Edited by Lê Quốc An
 
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