Shaman and modern equipment

During a trip to China in the year of 2006 or so, we were visiting some “indigenous” villages in the southern part of the country.  I am not sure which peoples these were, but they were probably Miao people, or possibly a Dong village in the province of Guizhou.  It is my understanding that the Miao, and possible the Dong, people came to China from southeast Asia, and are related to the Hmong people in Vietnam and Laos.  These are a couple of the 55 or so recognized minority groups in China. 

The village where we were staying was ancient looking, with the roads through town being winding trails just wide enough to let a water buffalo though on the way from its stall in the farmers’ homes to the fields.  The houses in town were all hand hewn, hand made, two-story buildings that tend to lean in various directions – sometimes in several directions within one building.  There were no automobiles, stores or other attributes of a modern town.  These are deeply religious peoples, but mostly believing in “shaman” style religions, based upon ancient knowledge’s and practices.

One morning we were taking a walk through town with our wonderful guide, Xiao (pronounced like the first four letters in “shower”).  We turned a corner and came upon an ancient shaman standing in the front of the doorway to a house, performing a healing ceremony for the lady of the house who was apparently quite sick.  Since there is no access to modern medical attention in these remote villages, the shaman is the doctor of choice.  My guess is that even if modern doctors are available, the shaman is still the doctor of choice.

He had some items in his hands that he was waving in prayer, and was chanting/singing a long prayer song.  When he saw us, especially me with my video camera, he made it clear that we were welcome to watch, and to take videos of his service – so of course I did take footage of that interesting event.  He stood in the doorway for a few minutes longer, until he apparently finished his work – and then rather abruptly packed up his things and left.  It seemed a little odd to me that there was really no tapering off of the ceremony, one minute he was deep in prayer and the next he just stopped and walked away.  Obviously he was finished with that work.

This was interesting at the time, but I discovered that something rather odd had occurred when I was finally at home and editing my “travel video.”  I had taken about 30 hours of video while on this trip.  My practice is to take more video than I think I need and then edit it down to a manageable length video, in this case an hour “feature” of our trip through Asia.  I copied all of that footage into my computer and began to work my way through it, selecting scenes that I felt were important, and adjusting their duration so that they create a better pace for the viewer. 

I was anxious to include the shaman footage because it was so unusual and striking.  I easily found the footage, but discovered to my dismay that while the visual part was perfect, it had no audio!  Out of the 30 hours or so of raw footage, there was one two minute piece that had no audio – this segment.  Not just no sound, but no sound track at all – just blank tape that hadn’t been recorded on, not even with a silent signal. 

All the rest of the tape was perfect, just as I had expected.   I was so perplexed that I got my camera out to see if there was a chance that I had accidentally turned off the audio recording feature.  However, that camera is a "point and shot" model which doesn’t have a way to turn off the audio – you get sound no matter what you want.  You can’t adjust the volume, and can’t turn it off.  So, as far as I am concerned it remains a mystery. Could it be possible that the shaman had some "mysterious" power to prevent the recording? Who knows? It is just another little event to wonder about.