We have a van that could seat twelve, but the rear four sets are folded up for all the gear. There are nine of us today. Two drivers (one with a loaner Buick for the beauty shots), the director, the cameraman, the sound-and-drone guy, the grip, the girl with a clipboard and the fixer. Oh, and me – nearly forgot. I am the “talent”, and my talent is having to say precisely the right words, in precisely the right order, in the sole 20-second window I am liable to get in the midst of a quarter-hour’s faffery. This is harder than it sounds, because it is 77 degrees in the shade, I have to wear oddly warm clothes to fit the continuity, our very presence draws crowds of people who are both noisy and distracting, and everything I say has to be written on the fly, but also factually accurate, and verifiable by two sources – those sources not to include online editable wikis. Otherwise, anything I say can be questioned by National Geographic S&P (Standards and Practices) back in Washington, and the footage will be useless. There is no space for an umm or an err… I cannot get any proper nouns even slightly wrong. I can’t repeat any words in any given speech.
Out to the long road south of the Great Wild Goose Pagoda, so we can do some shots of the Buick driving around past Chinesey things. The car we are using in on loan from the Xi’an dealership, so we have a driver wearing my shirt just in case the clothes are visible through the window, driving through all the fiddly bits. All I have to do is drive in a straight line from one point to another on two occasions, so they can get footage of me at the wheel in a built-up area.
As the crew start to set up, the security guards assemble. First a passing lady with a red armband. Then two men with walkie talkies and red armbands. Then three men with pressure hoses, washing the nearby statues, also with armbands. One of them stands right in front of the camera, calmly and without rancour. He won’t get out of the way until he sees our pass. We don’t have one, and when the fixer rings through to the tourist office who is supposed to have given us one, they don’t know who she is. We waste nearly an hour while she faffs with them, while the red armband stands in our way. Eventually, she returns with a signed form, and he pretends to have forgotten that we are there, walking away talking to an imaginary interlocutor on his phone.
Up to the Great Wild Goose Pagoda itself for me to do a 20-second piece to camera about how it was built as a repository for Tripitaka’s Buddhist scrolls. This takes two hours, because the camera has to be set up, the sound checked, the area cleared, the script agreed upon, and then a bunch of arseholes with mopeds and plastic machine guns cleared out of the way. Our new-found filming liaison, a specky woman in a mauve blouse, frets that by walking from the south side of the tower to the north side, we have effectively walked out of her jurisdiction, and so might face more red armbands at any moment. Meanwhile, crowds of people assemble nearby, pointing their iPhones at us and trying to work out if I am someone famous.
Up to the Muslim Quarter for biang biang noodles for lunch. We luck into a relatively deserted Muslim restaurant where I can talk to camera about the history of this particular dish – international as it is, with American chilis and tomatoes, carrots and cumin from westwards on the silk road, noodles made from wheat, etc. The restaurant staff are also not camera-shy at all, and keen to let the cameraman film them at work. It is a national holiday, so outside it is utter chaos. But we get lots of footage in the can.
Then the Tang Western Market for me to talk about the origin of the Silk Road, and finishing up at the Forest of Lions on the campus of the Xi’an College of Fine Arts. Or is it the Arts University? Or is it the Xi’an University of the Arts? Got to get it right, and got to get it right before the light goes, and before that old lady behind me throws bread to the ducks, or we need to change a camera battery, or before someone’s car alarm goes off.
At the end of the day, I ask the director how much footage we have got of the 132 minutes we need. She thinks maybe 60 seconds. But it was our first day, the crowds were distracting, and we lost an hour to battery hunts and an hour to official interference. It could be worse, and tomorrow should be better. Although tomorrow may be a different story, because I will be in a town I have never been before, talking about puppets.
Jonathan Clements is the author of A Brief History of China. These events featured in season two of Route Awakening (2016).
The Official Schoolgirl Milky Crisis Blog 
Hi Mr Jonathon Clements!
I was just wondering how I can watch this show? I tried accessing the NatGeoTV website and I’m not getting much luck. I live in New Zealand so maybe there is some kind of Geographic restriction?
Also, also, I wanted to just say that I first found out about you because I watched the 2002 release of Appleseed (1988) where there was an English commentary done by Larissa Murray (Deunen’s English language V.A.) and you!
The audio quality was pretty high and I assumed the commentary track was done in the late 2000’s or early 2010’s or something along those lines (I didn’t check when the copy I watched was re-released) and I was sucker-punched to hear you say that the track was recorded in April of 2002, 2 years before the 2004 movie and a couple of months before I was born! It was very, VERY surreal.
The commentary track was also strange to me because I was surprised I was hearing quite a bit of pretty deep introspective and context in English when interest in Anime perhaps wasn’t as widespread then. I suppose I have to re-evaluate my opinions of the people back then. I also want to add I really enjoyed the commentary and your insights. I particularly remember the part near the end where you were ranting about how you don’t understand why they had Deunen fart off screen was pretty funny.
I’m glad to see that you seem to be doing quite alright for yourself and that you’re still somewhat active online.
If you don’t mind me asking, do you still watch plenty of Anime and read plenty of Manga? If so, do you watch/read the more popular trending series?
And on a completely unrelated note, what are your thoughts about pirating media?
Warm regards,
Alex 🙂
Hello Alex.
Route Awakening was broadcast in over thirty countries, but I don’t know if New Zealand was one of them. I was hoping that we were going to go straight into shooting season six in 2020, but then COVID came along, and there was a massive regime change at National Geographic — I am not sure if anyone there even remembers who I am any more. Some of the crew were pleased to discover that a couple of episodes were running on Singapore Airlines in-flight entertainment a while back, but I don’t know if they still are.
I’m quite sucker-punched by the age of Appleseed commentary as well, as that was my first. You may have found the audio quality “high” because it was recorded in a super-classy, movie-level recording studio. These days, most of the commentary tracks I do get recorded in my lounge, because technology has progressed and belts have tightened.
There have been a dozen or so since. I don’t know if my anime- and manga habits count as “plenty”. I do still write the Manga Snapshot column for NEO every month, so I read at least one manga magazine every few weeks, and my translation work for Titan means there’s always a big queue to read. I doubt if I read the most popular series — my favourite most of this century has always been Kenshi Hirokane’s Shooting Stars in the Twilight, which has never been translated because I guess its not popular or trendy enough.
Not a fan of pirating media. I prefer it when people pay for my books, because otherwise I can’t afford to buy other people’s.
Hi Mr. Clements,
Thanks for responding!
I wasn’t aware of the regime change at NatGeo, it is a real shame. I enjoyed your commentary in the 2002 Appleseed (1988) re-release and I was hoping I could see more of your commentary/thoughts in Route Awakening. It was a topic that interests me too.
It probably isn’t financially viable for me to fly Singapore Airlines multiple times just to watch 3 seasons of the show. Doesn’t seem to be available on Disney for AUS/NZ either which seems to be the only place to host Nat Geo shows. [https://www.disney.com.au/search?o=home&q=Route+Awakening]
Forgive me for trying but even trying to pirate (my primary way of consuming media (I don’t have a lot of money)) the show failed for me.
It’s like the show only exists in the form of trailers, old behind-the-scenes photos, and a synopsis of the first 6 episodes of season 1 on the NatGeo website. How elusive.
Interesting to read that that was your first commentary track. I don’t really pay attention to commentary tracks but I thought that for a relatively niche Anime film from 1988 I’d give it a listen and I was pleasantly entertained. It was also interesting to hear the term “Manga-cartoons” rather than “Anime”.
I’ve never heard of “Shooting Stars in the Twilight”, I can’t read Japanese but maybe I’ll try use google translate if I can somehow get a hold of scans?Interesting to hear you read manga magazines, I guess that’s probably how must Japanese people read manga. Most people I know, including me, grew up reading manga on legally ambiguous sites with fan scanned and/or fan translated content which meant binging through a single series rather than a compilation of manga.
It’s so strange, your experiences with more “retro” anime and manga lead to some of the same content as I do, but you consumed it in a completely different way and far earlier than me. Though to be fair I didn’t exist yet. It’s like looking into an alternate universe.
Your thoughts on pirating media is completely valid, but on the flip-side I likely would not have gone down this rabbit hole of your work and this website if I hadn’t gotten a hold of a very specific 2002 DVD rip of an old 1988 anime off the internet.
To make up for it, if I somehow land a job in this job market I’ll buy one of your books 😅.
Warm Regards,
Alex