What he wasn't prepared for was the strict military greeting he received upon his arrival at government owned and operated Yunnan TV, one of the region's rare audio facilities. "It was a little intimidating to walk by a guard everyday. The first day, it took me thirty minutes of explaining before he let me pass." Herzog never got over the station and studio's spartan feel. Sharing observations about thick, concrete walls, lack of lighting in the hallways, studio doors that felt like entryways to well secured vaults, he responds, "Obviously they want to keep this facility well protected in case of any sort of uprising. The last thing they'd want to lose is communication. "

While he saw a few MTV style productions, he notes that Kunming production values seem much lower than in the U.S. "I had wondered," Herzog mentions, "before leaving, whether I would walk into a studio equal to what we have here. Their knowledge is there," Herzog believes, "and I believe they were hungry to see just how far we can take technology, but it's clear they simply don't have the opportunity or budgets to get their hands on this type of equipment. Whereas my analog machines mostly gather dust here, over there it's used on a daily basis. Theirs is good equipment but it's certainly not new. Essentially, what I saw was real bare bones voice and music. I saw no high - end animation. Where ours is a culture that always seems to think that no matter what, more is better, I just don't think they're into the whole whizz bang thing."

What intrigued Herzog was the fact that someone like himself, a man of fairly simply means, could have more equipment than a government owned and operated audio facility. "You don't find independent studios in cities like Kunming," Herzog states. "And things like Macintosh computers are virtually unheard of. When you compare that to a city like Atlanta, where we have an abundance of independent studios, each with state of the art equipment, it's pretty eye opening."