Mini-Recap: The Amazing Race China 4, Episode 8

TAR China

So I do think this was a better Leg and episode than last week. But overall, it was probably the 2nd weakest of the season. Still, not too bad.

We start out at the Chimelong Ocean Kingdom in Zhuhai. And I can’t be mad at being here for basically the first third of the episode. They must have been a major sponsor of this Leg and episode and any company or location that wants to sponsor The Amazing Race is fine by me. If it means more TAR, then bring on the sponsors!

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The first task of looking at the digital clues on the LED screen (which looked amazing, by the way) got me thinking how all the clue papers have had the same designs for the last 16 years. No change at all. It’s a very classic look and I’m glad TAR hasn’t changed it.

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The penguin task was fun. Any time you get to interact with animals, especially exotic animals like penguins is great. Very interesting task too having to feed them and basically lure them onto the scale.

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The diving task seems to have been inspired by TARA5’s Road Block in Singapore. But I think I might prefer this one more. TARA5’s Road Block was fine. But I like needing the teams to swim around the tank to find the animals who really could be anywhere since they’re moving and swimming around as well. On TARA5, it was basically a guessing game for the team member NOT performing the Road Block, though still tricky.

Insert more promo for JAC, another nice TAR China sponsor. Hehe.

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The almond cake task was pretty good too. It was a good Active Route Info task. But it would have been even more fun if there had been more than two teams at a time at the location performing the task.

For this Non-Elimination Leg I think quantity was good in exchange for the more simple tasks.

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So last week I immediately recognized the Face Off as the Battle of Mactan Duel Duel from The Amazing Race Philippines. I know that ActiveTV had actually already filmed that Double Battle on HaMerotz LaMillion, but TARPH2 was the one that aired the task first.

I think I prefer the TARPH version More than this one on TAR China. disOn TARPH2, it was a best-of-three match where both team members had to compete. If it was tied after those two rounds the winners of those two rounds would have to compete in the last round to decide the winner of the Duel Duel. There was some strategy involved teams and were tired out so I think it was a little more exciting on The Amazing Race Philippines.

You even got some great moments like this:

So it was definitely a little more simplified version here on TAR China. But the interesting thing is here on TAR China, the teams very neatly flipped their coin halves over. On TARPH2, teams just had to flip the coins to their color and it didn’t matter if they were all messy or not. So in a way the Chinese teams actually made it more difficult on themselves. Especially if it wasn’t part of the actual rules that they needed to keep the pieces together neatly.

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And finally the gondola task was likely inspired by TAR29 task in Venice. But I think I prefer this one more since teams actually had to memorize the songs even though there were probably shorter. If I remember correctly, I think on TAR29, teams had a cheat sheet to read off from.

So overall I think this was a solid leg, much better than last week. Maybe not the most exciting leg but still pretty good. And the number of tasks this leg made up for lack of Roadblock and Detour and one truly standout task.

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