Film crew members, including the photographer Michael Yamashita, are preparing to fly to China's westernmost city of Kashi in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to start the one-month shooting work, it was announced in Beijing Wednesday.

The film-making project will begin in Xinjiang and proceed eastward through Gans and Inner Mongolia to Beijing, then move south through Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, tracing the fabled route of Italian adventurist Marco Polo in the 13th century and Yamashita in the year 2001.

Film footage of Yamashita's travels in China will be an important part of the channel's 90-minute program series, which may reach 160 million households around the world, said Ward Platt, managing director of the National Geographic Channel Asia.

National Geographic photographer Michael Yamashita traced the route of Marco Polo, beginning in Venice and moving eastward through Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and China in 2001, using his camera to describe the changes that have taken place in the sites previously visited by Marco Polo.

His work was published in the National Geographic magazine and also in the book "Marco Polo", which has been published in 12 languages.

It was in 1998, the 700th anniversary of the publishing of Marco Polo's renowned travelogue, that Yamashita was inspired to make the trip. He said he wanted to find out if Marco Polo had ever really made the journey, given the reservations of some historians.

Now people will be able to discover the truth through a TV camera, as well as through original documents and photos, he said.

Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite TV will also send film crews to accompany Yamashita to shoot an on-location documentary for the National Geographic project.

National Geographic programs have reached millions of viewers on the Chinese mainland through collaboration with local television channels.

(People's Daily July 10, 2003)