Episode 2

Available for over a year

Jennifer Pak visits Hanoi in Vietnam to look at how life is changing in the city as more people are adopting the English language. Hanoi's Lenin Park under the former Soviet-style command economy, people gathered to exercise while Russian songs played on municipal speakers. Today young people in Vietnam dance to western pop music, many describing the lyrics as the language of freedom. However, there is a new culture associated with the English language which is challenging the deferential social model in Vietnam. Jennifer meets staff from a local company who are having difficulty adjusting to some aspects of English culture and also meets the famous Vietnamese singer My Linh, who says whilst she didn't express herself in her youth, her children's generation talk openly about their thoughts and feelings. They still don't talk to the older generation however, so she adds them on Facebook to see how they really think. Series Produced by Simon Pitts