Mohawk haircuts in Bali. In Guangzhou - in the New China - a buffeteria serving dishes called "Yes, Sir, Cheese My Baby", "A Legitimate Beef", and "Ike and Tuna Turner". In Japan a madder-than-ever baseball madness (favourite team: Yomiuri Giants), while the Japanese enact their own unfathomable rites against postcard-perfect backdrops of suburban America. But in Lhasa, the horrendous age-old ceremonial of Celestial Burial endures . . .
When Pico Iyer - born in England of Indian parents, at home both in East and West and now settled in Japan - set out to explore the East, he was wholly aware that the international pop culture had already arrived at some of the remotest reaches of the Asian continent. But he was unprepared for the bizarre mixture of old and new, calculation and innocence, illusion and disillusion that he found and brilliantly recaptures in 'Video Night In Kathmandu'.
