burke: TV DOCO #

'No money, no honey,' said the young male guide to Joanna Lumley. That's the scene in modern Datong, China. We are travelling in great style from Hong Kong to Moscow. Yet I have seen the other side - the poor with their roadside stalls in filthy mining villages; the earthen floors of village schools with little equipment or books; - but the Gobi desert! Amazing. Shamanism is alive and well - with rattles and flaming sticks and dancing into trance: just like a gathering of young poets in the deserts of Australia ... perhaps? The Mongolian shaman is protecting the Heart of the Earth - and banging the 'badness' out of Joanna. Oh the ancient beliefs are staged for the foreigners ... So what's on the other side? No money, no shaman.