Celebrate the Moon: Secrets of Lunar New Year (With Joseph)

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Transcript

Hello! Happy New Year, everyone! Happy Lunar New Year! May all of your dreams come true.  Welcome to Simple English Listening, bringing you exciting topics, but in simple, intermediate English. Thank you so much for making time for us. Some of you might celebrate New Year's on January 1st. However, in China, in Vietnam, where we are, Mongolia, Korea, and these communities all around the world, New Year is,  I don't know, not today.

Was it yesterday? Two or three days ago. Two or three days ago. And, but how do we know it's two? But the celebrations are still happening. The celebrations happen for days or a week or two, depending on where you live. So we're still in the New Year celebrations.  And, uh, so it slightly changes every year. Is that right?

Uh, why is that? Why can't it just be on the same day?  Well, we are using a solar calendar, and it is on the same day every year on the lunar calendar. But because those two calendars don't line up very well, it's different on the solar calendar. Just like our new year is different on their calendar every year.

So, welcome Joseph onto the podcast, my dear friend, who also lives in Hanoi. Thank you for letting me into your beautiful new apartment. We're currently in a small box right now. How big is this room that we're in? It's about the size of a handicapped bathroom toilet.  So you could get a wheelchair in here and use the bathroom.

Yeah, so this is like a sound box. As you can hear Joseph's, uh, refined and sexy voice. He does lots of sound work. And also he has a beautiful YouTube channel called  Joseph Learns the World. Joseph learns the world. Where he, uh, how could you summarize your channel in a nutshell? I like to learn about things and wherever the spirit moves me, whatever I find interesting and learn about, I make a video about it.

Nice. So we'll dive deeper into what he's learned on April the  1st. And Joseph will next join us. His YouTube channel is in simple English and there are subtitles perfect for you guys. Links are in the description. So today, together, we'll teach you about the biggest yearly celebration of Vietnam, Lunar New Year.

Here, they call it, uh, Tet. Is that right? Tet holiday, yes. Tet. Not Tet.  No, they don't ever say the last consonant of any word, really.  If it was like, Tet, Tet, Tet, Tet. Be like, more like,  Italiano. This year is the year of the dragon.  Do you know how many animals are in the Chinese zodiac?  I do know, and there are 12, just like the Western Zodiac, there are 12, right?

Mm hmm, mm hmm. However, instead of changing monthly, they change yearly. So, the Chinese ones, you're saying the Vietnamese ones, you were saying, are different? Slightly different. Some of the animals are not the same, but most of them are. Okay, well, I have the Chinese ones written here. Go through the Vietnamese ones and let's see  if they match.

So, the yearly cycle, the 12 year cycle, begins with rat.  Then buffalo. Yeah. Or is it an ox? In Chinese, it's the same so far. Ox, yeah.  Tiger. Yeah. Cat. Ooh. Okay. The Chinese one is rabbit. Yeah. Cat's cooler, for sure. Yeah. Agreed. Dragon. Mm hmm. Which is what I am. I'm year of the dragon. And so my, this is my third birthday.

I've made it to my third dragon year.  And then after dragon is snake, horse. The next three, I can never remember the order, but I think it is  goat.  Monkey, chicken, or rooster, I guess. And I believe the Chinese one does not have a goat. They have a sheep, is that right? That's right. Very knowledgeable. Very impressive.

And then the last two are dog, and then pig.  And just like the zodiac we use in the West, in the Chinese zodiac, a person has characteristics. as a personality based on their animal of the year they were born. For example, my animal is the ox, the buffalo, 1985,  which is apparently, like, strong, reliable, fair, hardworking, and some other things.

Actually, it's a very long list to the point where  it's like everyone is part of every other animal. You know, but if you read the horoscope, it's just like, it can apply to almost anyone. Yeah, I'm just like, I'm that animal and that one and that one. It's like written, like using truisms. However, one of the things that they say, I don't know about in China.

I'm sure it's very similar, but in Vietnam, they say, whatever your animal is, it's not necessarily about how you behave, but it's about how the course of your life will go. So you are buffalo, which means that you will have a hard life. Buffaloes have a hard life because they're put to work.  However, in Vietnam, everyone wants to have babies in Year of the Pig.

Because the pig is very lucky. The pig gets fed, the pig gets fat, the pig gets rich, and the pig has an easy life on the farm. I mean, I would assume that the pig is rolling around in mud and up to trouble. And happy. And intelligent, as well. And intelligent, yes. Very intelligent animals. Uh, so I've always wondered, though, like, you know, what happens if a person's  If that star sign contradicts their western star sign, if it shows opposite characteristics, then they're not strong and not weak, not reliable, not flaky, not confident, not timid.

You know what I mean? You're just something in the middle. Like, what are you?  Just plain. Plain. Vanilla. Vanilla. Astrologically vanilla flavor.  Astrologically bland.  Just water flavor. Water flavor. Just Just play nice. Joseph is very deep into the local culture here and has married into a Vietnamese family. 

On your magnificent YouTube channel, we can see you preparing for Tet.  Here in Hanoi, for the few days just before Tet, it's, uh, it's insane, right? All the markets are absolutely packed. Everyone is frantically buying everything they need at the last minute. More intense. 100 percent more frantic than Christmas in the UK.

Ah, I just suddenly had a memory of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, where he's desperately trying to buy a toy. Jingle all the way. Love that movie. I love it. Yeah, that's like from the  1990s, right?  And he's like, uh, fighting other people to get hold of a toy for his kid. And, uh, so you have the famous flower market in Hanoi, which is, uh, so smelly, but a positive way of saying that smelly, like a positive smell is pun No, pungent isn't it?

I would say aromatic. Aromatic or fragrant. Fragrant. Yeah. Yes, fragrant would be a compliment. Fragrant. So it smells fragrant to such a degree that it actually overpowers  the smell of the traffic. And the smell of, uh, what's on my ground.  Yes. A friend of mine lives next to Hanoi's famous flower market, and he was on his motorbike.

On his motorbike, he says he couldn't move for 40 minutes. I believe that. Just trapped in the madness of the Tet shopping.  So, how was your Tet? What's, uh, like a summary of what you did? Or what you might have had to do, because obviously you have a family responsibilities.  Well, yes, there are a lot of family responsibilities, a lot of meeting people, a lot of  religious or spiritual ceremonies.

And  leading up to the new year, there are certain practices.  As midnight rolls over, there are certain practices, and all of the days after there are certain practices. So each of these days even have a name. And it's, uh, it's many days. Many days, yeah. So, I believe seven days before the actual New Year, they have a day called And that is the kitchen gods.

You'll see this If you go to a lake or a river, you'll see many people coming to the lake and the river and releasing fish. But there's an entire ceremony that you do in the house first.  With the fish? With the fish, yes. I mean, what do you do, what do you wash them or put them in the bath? I didn't.  We put them in a bowl,  in the water obviously, and there's a whole meal, you set up the five fruit tray, you set up incense, you set up vases with flowers, and you cook the meal, and that's the meal I assume is for the kitchen gods.

That you've cooked it for them. And then the fish are next to the meal. And they're there for the entire ceremony. And the, the meaning of this is there are gods that live in your kitchen. And they watch over you. And they watch what you do. They watch how you behave all year. If you're good to your family or you're bad to your family.

Very similar to Santa. Santa Claus. And then what you are doing in this ceremony, they say, is you are putting the gods on the back of the fish. And then you take the fish to a river,  and you release them into the river. These have to be koi fish, by the way. Okay, and they come with a, like a price tag. I mean, it's not just goldfish.

No, it's not goldfish, it's koi fish. Beautiful, beautiful fish. Yeah. And if you know the legend of the koi fish, the koi fish Swims up a waterfall and becomes, do you know?  No.  A dragon. Oh my god. That's where dragons come from. They're koi fish turn into dragons as they ascend to heaven. And if there was a fish that looks kind of dragon esque, it's a koi.

With that beautiful pattern on it and also like their fins. Yeah. Kind of. And that's why, uh, as we all know in the great lore of Pokemon.  Magic carp turns into Gyarados. Okay. The little useless fish turns into the most powerful dragonfish.  Yeah, yeah. As, uh, whenever you let the fish go into the river, the fish are carrying the gods on their back.

So they say. And then the fish swim, hopefully, to a waterfall. I don't think they really do. They ascend up the waterfall, become a dragon, fly to heaven, And then the gods report to the Jade Emperor, which is the main deity, god, powerful being. And they tell him everything that you've done throughout the year. 

It's interesting how many cultures have this, it's not just Santa, but Odin would send ravens in the Norse, yeah, like Odin, Thor, Freyja, and the ravens would watch you to see, report back if you've been good or bad. And then after, after the new year, once the new year begins,  I believe there is a ceremony that calls the gods back to your house, and they live near your stove, which in modern houses, the stove doesn't really view the entire house, but in traditional Vietnamese houses, where they have the stove, is a good place that watches the whole house, really.

Okay, and the stove is the part of the kitchen where you cook, or you make a fire, or you can boil water, or do many different things, and they live, they live on the stones surrounding the traditional stove. Wow. In your Tet preparations, I saw Lunar New Year, Tett. I saw a video of you buying a coriander. Uh, coriander the plant.

Uh, so tell us about, about that. You're buying coriander in the market. Why? So, even though this is my eighth Tett video, Or Vietnamese Lunar New Year in Vietnam, I'm still learning new traditions because  even though I'm part of a Vietnamese family, I don't,  I didn't grow up as a child here, so I can only pick up things that I ask about or that somebody specifically tells me I need to do.

So apparently my mother in law has been doing this for the past six years, but I just found out about it this year. And right before midnight, or, you know, a few hours before midnight,  one of the things that you prepare is a big bundle of coriander. And you boil it in water, and wow, it smells so good. And she keeps cooking it, re cooking it, so that the whole house will smell like it every morning.

So we've been seeing it every day. So the main purpose of the coriander is to make the house aromatic. Aromatic. Fragrant. That, I think, is a  part of it, but the main, I guess, goal is to bathe with the coriander. Water.  With water. So you pour the water over you, and it's very green. I mean, that water was like your shirt right now.

Yeah. Jungle, not jungle green, but emerald green. Elf green. Elf green.  Um, you can either fill a bath and then pour the water into the bath, or you can just pour the water over your head, you wash your hair. So, before the invention of modern soaps and shampoos, this was what they used to bathe with. In past times, bathing wasn't like it is now, where we bathe every day.

Maybe they would just go get in a river with no soap or anything. However, once a year, you get a special bath, and the point of this is that you only do it after you've cleaned your entire house, which is another New Year. So it's very much a  cleansing. Cleansing. Yes. It seems like lots of the psychology of these Tet traditions, correct me if I'm wrong, is like cleansing the dirt from the previous year and preparing the next year.

That's right. The beginning of Lunar New Year. is at the beginning of their spring.  It's the beginning of the planting season. It's the beginning of the flower season. And because they're Their life and traditions are so connected to rice agriculture that they really need as much good luck and as much, um, all the help they can get for a good planting season and a good spring. 

I mean, one thing, I've lived in Vietnam, I'm not part of a Vietnamese family, but the first thing you see throughout That is the red envelopes. And, uh, they call it Lucky Money. Lee see. Okay. Lee see. And, uh, everyone gets these red envelopes. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Lucky Money is, uh, a lot of kids. It's a kind of a thing for kids.

A lot of families. The older people don't get lucky money. However, my wife has a lot of value on older people. She really does. And so she makes envelopes for her aunts. She makes it for the grandparents. Like any house we visit, which you visit a lot of people's houses during the Lunar New Year. You go house to house to house.

She always brings it to the elders. She thinks she puts a lot of value on it. And it, I think, has brought a lot of value to her life. So going on about luck, did you say something before that it's like the first guest in your house or something? The first everything in the new year. Everything. The first thing that you get sets your luck for the rest of the year.

That's why they give lucky money. So that the first thing that happens to you is you get money. And they put it in a red envelope because red is the color of luck. That's why they have red flowers and red dresses and red curtains and red everything for New Year. And, yeah, weren't you saying that, like, the first guest in the house, this, like, sets the scene for the luck to come?

Yes. And they try to have lucky people? Uh, to be the first guest. Yes, so whoever is the first person that comes into your house. You'd feel pretty bad if, like, you never get invited to people's, like, house first. Yeah. It's like, I'm the unlucky one, and you just accept it. Like, that's me. I'm the unlucky one.

Oh. I never get invited to people's house first. The minute you walk through the door, like, uh, parts of the house start crumbling down. Oh, as we say in America. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.  The luck never happens to you. Yeah. Um, but what happens if it's not the person that enters first, but like a dog or something?

Yes. So, whoever comes in, you get their luck. If it's a good person, you get their good luck. If it's a bad person, you get the bad luck. But  If you're super, super lucky, a dog will come into your house first. Because in Vietnam, well, where we're from, what dogs say are woof woof or bark bark, maybe yip yip.

Yeah. But dogs in Vietnam, do you know what they say? What? Go go! Okay. So whenever a child is pretending to be a dog, or whenever a child talks to a dog, they'll say, Go, go, go! Go, go, go!  Uh, so, but can't people just set that up? So before New Year's, they'll put like five dogs in their garden. We set it up, too.

We bring our dogs out. And we let them go in first. And we took our dogs It was like the strike of midnight, where you open the door. And we took our dogs on a walk. Between 12 and 1, and every house we walk by, the dogs poke their noses in, and people go crazy about it. Oh, bring your dogs in! Bring your dogs in!

They, they're so, they can't believe it. Whenever a dog walks by, and the dog pokes their head into their house. Yeah. They're so, they're ecstatic. Is there any other animals that have So let me tell you why a dog is so lucky. Because a dog says, go, go.  And go rhymes with zo,  which is a word in Vietnamese for rich. 

So dogs bring riches. But there is an animal who's, so the word for poor is ngao. And there's an animal that says meow. Meow, meow rhymes with ngao, ngao. I see where this is going. Do not want a cat coming into your house as the first guest.  Or you will be poor all year. Yeah.  Haircuts. Every barbershop in the country will be closed for the first ten days of the year.

And I haven't had a haircut for three weeks, and I was hoping to have one, like, today. You get haircuts every three weeks? Uh, about that. Wow. I've got, like, a, obviously, long hair at the back, but the top needs to be sculpted. That is so consistent. So you're saying, I can't get It cuts off your luck. You don't want to cut off your luck.

So that's it. So, it cuts off luck, and as a result, barbers,  a barber is a hairdresser for men, barbers will be closed. Almost all of them will be closed, yes. Also, your boss will not pay you, I'll tell you about that too. Your boss won't pay you at the beginning. They can give you lucky money, but they won't pay you.

Or else, all year, they will be losing money.  So do they delay first payment? That's  why they always say we'll pay you on the 10th to the 15th. Because if the 10th falls on the first day of the lunar month, they won't pay you. So,  now you say that, like, at my school, we get, in February, normally you get paid on the 25th.

But in February, you get paid on the 1st. Mmm. So they kind of get it out of the way. Because the 25th would be after Lunar New Year. Lunar New Year. Pretty much every year.  And then there are so many This is not a New Year's one, but there are so many luck related superstitions. I don't know if that's a pejorative term, but there are so many luck related money related things with luck.

So I have a gap in my teeth.  Listen to me, bro. Uh, do you, uh, does money flow out of you?  They say if you have a gap in your teeth, money flows out of you. Money doesn't flow in, nor out, so. Uh, but,  it just kind of stays where it is. Yeah, it stays always on the outside. So, when he says a gap in the front teeth, that means between your front two teeth. 

There's a gap a space space the teeth are not together. They're slightly apart. So both of us have that gap Yes, my sister. However has very Tightly spaced teeth her teeth are all touching very tight and they say people with Tightly spaced teeth are tight with their money. They are misers. They don't let money flow out of them at all.

And they're almost stingy or greedy. I see. So in conclusion, the gap in the teeth means money freely goes out and in? Nope. Just out. And if you have tight teeth That money doesn't flow out. So generally, you're richer if you have tight teeth. And, uh, with my sister, she's fairly, fairly wealthy, and she's, she's good at hanging on to her money.

I'm not as good as hanging on to my money, so in those two cases, it's true.  Uh, any more luck related things? You were saying something about stairs? Mm hmm. So, if the stairs face the door, so for instance, if you walk into a building or a house, and you can see the stairs going up, that means that there's  a slant going towards the out of the house, and money flows out of that building or house. 

So, people don't want to get a house where the stairs are facing the front door. Even our house. I don't know if you noticed, as you come in, there's one step.  My wife and her mother really did not want to buy this house because they were afraid that that one step was going to cause the money to flow out of our house.

So, if stairs are opposite the front door going down in Vietnam, it means money will  Fly out the house, down the stairs. Stairs and out the door. Just like you've fallen, you know, down the stairs and just rolled out.  So it seems like lots of these are superstitions, I guess you could say. They are quite, like, luck centric and money centric.

Very money centric.  They have many things to call money. They call money into the house, um, especially around New Year's. But just throughout the year, they will go to temples, and they will pray for money. It's a, I think in the West it is kind of a, not a good Not looked at as good to pray for money and always be thinking about money.

But also, like, Buddhism is the main religion here, right? As well as Taoism. But it's one of the most popular ones in which temples are made for. So it's quite funny to wish for, like, for money. They don't do it at the Buddhist temples. Oh, interesting. They call the Buddhist ones pagodas. Mm hmm. And the temples By the Taoist one.

They're the Taoist or maybe even animist. Animist, yeah. Animist. This is a worshipping of nature. We're well. Natural things. Natural gods. Many things. Yeah. Each, each town has. It's maybe not a god, but it's a powerful spirit, or sometimes they call them genies, or djinns. They don't, the words don't translate very well.

Some places they call them angels, some places they call them spirits. Just depending on how they translate it. Every town has their Spirit. And that's what they put in the, I think they call it a ding. Okay. And that's a temple. And they're more likely to pray for money to those. Yes. Rather than the Buddhist temples.

And those,  each one can be something different. So perhaps a Buddhist monk. who is very high up, or as they see, enlightened, he visits the town. They might make a temple for him. Or maybe something really bad happens in that town a long time ago, and some person from the town was special and gets killed, they will bury him there.

And that, then the temple will be dedicated to him. So, each one can be just something completely different. They can venerate a king. It means they put a lot of value or worship a king. And there are temples dedicated to, to kings as well, right? Like the Hung Kings in Saigon. Or Chun Hun Dao. Chun Hun Dao was a general.

And so, Viet General is a, like a military leader.  So, he was high up in the military. He was actually family with the king, and because of his successes, they said that he, they wanted to make him king. But he respected his nephew too much, and let his nephew stay king, even though the nephew was maybe not as, not strategic, or as wise, or powerful as him.

So Vietnam is one of only a few places in the whole world  that has beat  The Mongols. So the Mongols, uh, Genghis Khan, it wasn't him, but it was his grandson, Kublai Khan,  sent armies to invade Vietnam. And Vietnam is one place that resisted and kicked the Mongols out. And the general that did that, not once, but twice, was Chen Handao.

Okay. The man they wanted to be king, and who has a temple.  His temple is on Wan Kim Lake. You know the, where you cross the red bridge? Is it? That's his temple. Okay. It's called Ngap Sun. Yeah. And that's the one that people pray for money the most. Okay. Okay. And, uh, so, one final thing that comes to mind,  when driving around before chat, All of the Hanoians, like, well, so many of them are walking around with these, like, trees in their hands.

Like, trying to sell them to every driver and every person who walks past them. Like, they're shoving trees in your face. Like, you know, you want to buy these trees? And they're like hideous looking, like, skinny Skeletons? Skeleton, like, horror movie kind of trees. With a few little nice flowers on them.  Is it like everyone has to get a tree?

I haven't noticed. Every business has one of these weird skinny trees inside. So those are, what do you know about that? Those are peach blossom trees. You might, you and your listeners might be very familiar with the sakura trees. In Japan, that have the pink blossoms, the trees here are very similar to those.

They're peach blossom. I think sakura is a, maybe, cherry blossom. But it's essentially the same thing. And the reason they get those, they do. They look like skeletons. Bare trees, and they put them in their house. But, It's another thing about spring. Spring is when things begin to grow. It's the, is it the blossoming?

These are blossoming trees. They blossom in your house. Blossoming is the, when the opening of flowers in spring is when a flower blossoms. Okay, so it's blossoming trees in their house. And you get to watch it throughout the Tet holiday. So at the beginning, it's nothing. And then on the New Year, maybe some open, two or three days into the New Year, they begin opening and opening and opening.

Oh, it's like a beautiful little touch. It's like a self decorating Christmas tree.  Yeah, and Christmas trees only get worse. Yeah.  I, when I was a student, we had our Christmas tree up until July, and it was half, like, orange, basically, hideous, it was all discolored, and it, there was, like, crisp packets, and, like, chocolate bar wrappers on it, and, uh, do you know, do you remember Trolls, with the really high hair?

Oh, yes. It had, like, a Troll mask on the top of it. Oh, that's cute. Well, we just took our Christmas tree down last week, so that we could put up our Tet tree, even though it's February. What's it overall? Like, as a, as a Western person married into a Vietnamese family, you get two big events. Major holidays.

Every winter. Yes. To carry you through this, uh, dark and cold time of year. Yeah. It's really nice. And there's a movie, uh, there's a movie called Full Metal Jacket. Full metal jacket by the great movie director, Stanley Kubrick. One of the greatest of all time. And it's his movie about the Vietnam War. And one thing that they say in the movie, and the movie takes place leading up to the Tet Offensive.

Now, the Tet Offensive was a giant military action. In the Vietnam War, there was an offensive attack where the Vietnamese attacked American and Southern Vietnamese forces all over the country. It was a massive coordinated attack, and it happened on Tet holiday. Okay. And many of the Americans  Even though they had heard a big attack was coming, they didn't believe an attack was coming because they said the Vietnamese won't do anything on their holiday.

They really take off that holiday. Especially because, uh, when negative things happen, right, right before Tet. Yes. Like, uh, people in Vietnam are very careful to, like, not have accidents and such things, and get into fights, right, just before Tet? Mm hmm. Because then it sets up the rest of the year. Mm hmm.

So, strategically, Tet  was like the perfect time for them to attack. It was a massive surprise. Yeah. It was a massive surprise. And one thing they say in that movie, and it really is true, he says, the Vietnamese aren't gonna attack on Tet. Tet is like Christmas, New Year's, and the 4th of July all rolled into one. 

And it is. I mean, it's so many days long. It is truly epic, uh, how people prepare for Tet. As I said, it's It's frantic, it's stupidly busy. All the markets, and then, but the first day of Tet,  everyone disappears. Everyone disappears. Into their houses. Or, from Hanoi, into their hometown. Yes, back to the countryside.

Many people who live in Hanoi. are from the countryside. And the streets are nearly empty because so many people, uh, when the pollution clears,  the city becomes beautiful and like so chilled and relaxed. Do you remember during COVID, when COVID really, it reminded me of that, when it hit Europe and it showed all of those European cities and there's no one.

In these, you know, Trafalgar Square, Empty, Venice. Empty. Berlin. Empty. That's what Thiet is like all over Vietnam. Every shop is closed. Doors closed. Nobody on the road. I couldn't believe how, like, every shop, every eatery place, any place you can eat was closed, closed, closed. A ghost town. I drove around trying to find something to eat.

Because I, I have no kitchen at home. Unlike, you have a lovely kitchen downstairs, may I add. I've got no kitchen. So I thought I was going to starve to death. I was afraid I was going to turn into a skeleton,  ragging bones. But the Circle K, like a, which is a convenience store, 7 Eleven, that was open. And for a whole day, I had to just eat.

Like, yoghurt, drinks, noodles, dry noodles, and  crisps. I sat down  and I noticed how  the streets were empty, but the families were all going on lovely walks. And they wear their, like, their best clothes. The idiom, we say, their Sunday's best. Yeah. The men in suits and hats. In Hanoi, like, older men are sometimes very well dressed, and the women.

in Owl's Eyes. Owl's Eyes is a traditional costume. And it's very beautiful. It's, it's like a front and a back dress and it splits up the sides. It splits up the side and it makes a woman's legs look much longer. They look longer and Sometimes the legs, or the hips, poke out of the sides. It's a very beautiful dress.

Very. Yeah, it goes with the woman's figure. Like, more, like, elegantly. Because it's front and back. Than any other traditional dress that I've seen. The front and back move side to side as they walk. Like a beautiful  swishing. Yes. Yeah. I thought it was very cute seeing all the families, for once, being able to walk.

Because the traffic is, like, so bad in that part of town. And they were just, like, proudly walking, like, with their family. Do you have an owseye? I do. They have male owseyes as well. Yeah. You do? Yeah, well, I'll put it on after this and we can take a picture. Yes! Okay, guys, right, so the thumbnail is Joseph wearing his alzheimer's. 

Well, thank you so much, Joseph. We'll see Joseph again on April 1st.  Okay?  Thank you for joining us. April 1st, we've got loads of exciting things to talk about. I won't spoil it. Involving  origins of a human  civilisation. Da da da da da da da da doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. Yep. Stories he's heard, legends around Vietnam, all in simple English.

Thank you, everyone for joining us from the bottom of our hearts. Remember to to like, subscribe, follow, leave a review, and engage with our content. Please check out Joseph's channel. That's the best gift, best New Year's gift you can give us, of course. Have a beautiful  week, and see you in two weeks for the next episode.

Okay. Oh, and one more thing I want to say. Chúc mung năm moi. Chúc mung năm moi. Which means Happy New Year in Vietnamese.