Water, water, everywhere...

Images from the Yangtze...

He's not heavy, he's the Dalai Lama...

We got word today- no Tibet episode this shoot. Don't know exactly what's going on at home- slight news vacuum out here- but apparently the Chinese are irate about an award the Dalai Lama is receiving from the U.S. As communist party logic would follow- that means no tourists or journalists allowed in Tibet right now. Smooth move cadres. So our little band of filmmakers will land back on home turf Nov. 5th instead of the 15th. There's a definite mixture of relief and disappointment- three episodes over 6 weeks in China is a bit trying. We're only half way through the second episode and already everyone's feeling it. But we all really want to go to Tibet- so we're hoping the shoot there is just postponed until the round of episodes next year.

Other than that it's pouring on the Yangtze today- but overall a good day. It's been tricky for me to fight my natural cynicism and be more upbeat for the show- hard to sustain a personality contrary to your natural state. But I felt like today we started to figure out how to play with my role a little more- how to allow my natural self to come through and have a little fun with it. Hopefully I'll retain a smidgen of likability- otherwise I'm sure I'll end up "not the blonde one - you know - the asshole". Crossing fingers.

Oh yeah. When the hotel sent someone up to collect my laundry the other day, I was most appreciative when she spat (and how) on the carpet next to my bed. No offense meant- purely an acceptable act in backwater China. Incredulity sealed my mouth shut, but I am no longer walking around my room barefoot...

A wake on the Yangtze...

shapes like dreams
rise from the river banks.
they are the clouds of our REM
cycles. our wake pulses
a desaturated flame
while naked bulbs from peasant
shacks nest in the shadow
hillsides dying like faint
stars under the hypno-hum
of our engine lullaby.

---------

Those are my thoughts on the Yangtze at night. We've been floating for two hours - three more hours to go before we hit our hotel tonight. We're flying down the river in a boat with no real lights to speak of. Started the morning at 6:30 am- one three and a half hour flight, one four hour bus ride, and now five hours on a suspect boat. Transit time included we'll have pulled a non-stop 18-hour marathon of a travel day...

Counting sheep...

my shot of Pete, Pete's shot of me...

Too sleepy to write much...

It's been a long several days--- everyone's pretty tired, myself included. Here are some pictures though until I'm able to give a more thorough update as to what we've been doing...

Eager uygurs (wee-gers)...

The mosque this morning...

High tech yurts and goat's heads...

Just finished a 15-hour day. More or less the same length as yesterday with an early call time tomorrow. I think Pete and I are getting the rhythm of this a little better. Or at least learning to play off each other a little more naturally. 7:30 am the main mosque square in Kashgar will be packed with 50,000 Uygurs, 2 Americans, 1 Brit, 1 Canadian, and 1 Australian (go team go). We're trying to get right in the middle of the action--- we'll see how lucky we are. Then we're off to a collection of yurts somewhere above 13,500 ft. We started the altitude medicine today.

I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm doubting I'll have either cell reception or internet access up there. Unless of course all yurts these days are Wi-fi accessible.

Oh, and dinner tonight was goat's head. I took a nibble of its brain's right hemisphere, tasted like liver. With a worse after taste. Yum.

Please for zzzzz's....

Very sleepy...got almost no sleep last night on the concrete mattress. Start out cold, end up sweating. Long day. We left the hotel around 8 am this morning and headed out to a knife factory in Yengisar, shot some stuff and headed back towards Kashgar to check out a cock fight. Kind of crazy. I have to say I'm always drawn towards places that are a little seedy. Don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe neither. I just find it fascinating to enter into substreams of daily life that I'd never access without my camera.

Out of a window in a knife factory in Yengisar...

Market in Kashgar...

1 down...39 left to go...

We finished the first day of shooting today--- overall went really well. We're all exhausted though...so everyone, including myself is heading to bed. But nice to start off well and get one under our belt. Oh, by the way, the Chinese government decided to pull the plug on our Tibet episode because it coincides with the Central Party Congress...only here in China...I'll expand on that tomorrow...

People, places, things...

The tarmac in Kashgar last night. View over the city this a.m. Hotel room ceiling/wall last night.

Surreal kashgar...

I woke up this morning at 4:30 am to horns bleating and "Happy Birthday" spewing out a car's speakers circling the block below my hotel room. It's a funny place--- I love it so far. I'm just excited to be in a new part of a country that's relatively old to me.

Last night back in NYC was the premiere for a project I was involved in for several months this year-- CNN's Planet in Peril. Wish I had been able to attend-- especially since it would have been with amazing friends from my agency...Annick, Lauren, Sarah and Aidan...next time hopefully. I always miss the parties!!!

Carry-ons and preconceptions...

There's a French drama playing on the cabin screens, dubbed into Mandarin, subtitled in English. We're spaced out between rows 6, 7, and 8, our carry-ons divided among all the left over overhead bins. We were the last ones on the plance so our bags are jammed in wherever they could fit. It's three hours into the 5-hr. flight to Urumqi in western China. I always forget how massive this country really is. If we didn't have Alaska, the US would be dwarfed by the PRC.

We'll sit in the Urumqi airport and then hop an hour or so flight into Kashgar. I love the name Kashgar-- for some reason it conjures up images of total desolation-- frontier life on the outskirts of civilization. I can't wait to see how my impressions match up with reality. This is a part of China I've always wanted to see. I'm expecting a landscape and culture more akin to Mongolia than your standard fare Han-populated China.

Jason, our associate producer, just leaned back over his window seat in front of me to point out a road cutting across the earth below. Besides some distant mountains, it's the only semblance of topography on a bleached landscape. It's chalk and grit 30,000 feet below. Monochromatic until the land starts to mingle with the faded atmospheric blue of the horizon line. Yeah, I think desolation is the right word.

It's going to be odd to see blue eyes on a Chinese person. Forget about blonde hair. But of all the places in the country, this is going to be the spot with the most genetic diversity. The most radical departure from the classic black hair and dark eyes of the stereotypical Chinese. It's a funny place to introduce our producer and soundman to the country. We're starting them off in the most atypical part of the country-- although I guess the reality is that this is as much part of China as any other part-- north/south/east/west. That's going to be a bit of a brain stretch for me-- to incorporate this part of China into my childhood concept of the place. In some ways-- it's not too far off from squeezing our bags into chalk-full overhead bins...

Oh the horrors...

Here now in Beijing. Flight was long (13+) hours, but not as bad as ones I've flown before. But wow. United Airlines internationally is even worse than I remember. The flight attendants breached new levels of crabbiness-- pole vaulting over established levels of decency. The sound continually cut out during the movies-- at all the key plot points. As far as the "food" goes (and yes, I know it's cliche to complain about airline food)-- it had to have been carcinogenic in the least, harvested from post-apocalyptic fields, fertilized with radiation. Ugh. I've peeled back more than my fair share of tin foil on bad inflight meals, but wow.

We ran some errands yesterday-- grabbing a cordless razor and some power strips. Stopped off for a quick meal and a beer and then an Ambien supported night of sleep at the Sino-Swiss Hotel. Now I'm sitting with some carry-on while we round up last minute cups of Starbucks and hop the 5-hr. flight to Urumqi. We got tagged with $1200 USD in excess baggage for this flight alone-- so maybe that'll buy us a meal upgrade....

Seat 40E

Okay- on the plane...ready to go...excited. Fun to fly with Pete (my brother) again. Been awhile. Last time was Botswana I think. Hope they have good movies!

Tomorrow we fly...

All packed. Well almost all packed. Still waiting for my iPod to finish charging. It's part of my arsenal. My weaponry to combat the oftentimes idiocy of traveling. At least that's how I feel about it now. Sometimes I'm excited. I would have been today I think, but then spent most of the time on the phone trying to finish up some contract negotiations and figure out liability and workers comp insurance. Yippee. Fun times. But now that it's all taken care of, I'm more or less ready to go. Unlike a lot of times, this trip should be fun. I realize it can sound spoiled for me to say that. But it's true. Spend too much time roaming, and it catches up to you. I'm with a group this time though. My brother and I are hosting a documentary for Nat. Geo. In row 40 on the direct Washington- Dulles to Beijing flight tomorrow will be our producer, our assoc. producer, our sound man, my brother and myself. The DOP is flying in from Sydney to meet us there. Other than that there's not too much to say. Feeling a bit out of it right now. But that's not too uncommon for me right before I head out. Sitting on my bed surrounded by a pile of just-washed clothes that I'm leaving behind. Munching on a pack of Gusher's faux fruit candy (the kind we never ate as kids-- too much sugar). A little scared even though I've done this a thousand times. I don't think the Gusher's are a comfort food, but they might be. Guess I have to add Gusher's to my arsenal. Here's a self-portrait from a recent shoot...my hotel room in Athens, Greece....