Sorry for the delay guys. Had a 14-hour long work day, had to grab some shut-eye before trying to watch it.
How long was this episode?! That's a lot of tasks for a single-episode leg that's not the finale.
Some housekeeping stuff first. That was their standard 80~85-ish minute long episode, without ads, but with the promotional sponsor inserts. The finale at least seems slightly shorter, at least from the one I'm about to run now.
Here we go....
Final City as informed since earliest of teasers is Shanghai. If someone missed a proper Shanghai leg from Canada 5, maybe we get a proper one here.
Starting Point: Shanghai Film Park, with teams already dressed in classic early 20th century costumes.
Alyssa and XiuJieKai won 5 legs, Joe and Likun been a strong team and MinXia and XianCheng won no legs but are actually locals.
Teams will depart 1 minute apart from each other, following the finishing order from leg 9.
The 1st clue is recorded in a Cassete Tape.
ARI: 爵士春秋 - "All that Jazz"
Travel to Paramount Party Room and watch the jazz performance, and memorize the name of the 10 performers, which are written under their shoes. They must name each one of the performers correctly on the poster located outside, to receive the next clue.
Performances happen every 5 minutes, teams may keep re-watching until they get the answer.
ARI: Travel to China pavilion at Expo 2010, using the provided pieces, correctly assemble a DouGon mock-up structure, which is a layered Chinese architecture feature, to receive the next clue and a DouGon model.
RB: 谁能纵横上海滩? Who wants to be at the beach?
At the WH Ming Hotel, must ascend the building, with the voice controlled automated harness, and grab the 10 race flags glued on the windows to receive the next clue. The voice must be at least at 90db to ascend, then as it go louder, it will make it ascend faster.
It's physically exhausting, as the 90db sound must maintained somehow, otherwise the harness will start to descend.
Also the flags were not set closer together, that the spread of both arms would solve the issue of reaching them, so some ascending and descending to maneuver the direction is also required.
[side note, I'd love to see how Scott Flannary would fare in this challenge, for reasons....]
RI: Travel to an old house at 114 Jiangsu Road and search for the next clue.
RB: 谁知女人心? Who knows a woman's heart?
Correctly serve the snacks orders for the 4 ladies at the table. The difficulty of the task besides getting the correct items, is the fact that ladies will only place the order in Shanghainese, which is another Chinese dialect altogether.
With two Taiwanese racers performing the RB and only one local, MinXia had the clear advantage. As the entire order had to be correct, and the wrong items would not be identified, it wasn't a easy challenge.
Added to the localness of the task, besides the old house setting, dishes were all famous local snacks.
RI: Use the DiDi App on the provided smartphone to call for a car and Travel to Hongqiao Railway Station to search for your next clue.
RI: Travel to AnHui Railway Station where they will find marked HeiHeiRu cars to take them to the company's factory.
It basically adds a second city to this finale leg and features heavily the season's name sponsor.
ARI: Travel to HeiHeiRu Assembly Line, and complete the memory challenge about the 10 legs of the race by finding the only correct picture for each clue among the 150 clue boxes available. Must obtain 10 correct answers in order to receive the final clue for the finish line.
Racers must remain together during the entire task and cannot split-up.
All teams together at the memory challenge was very exciting.
(As someone who was never a huge fan of TAR13, I completely blanked out that this was mostly that season's memory challenge)
So much about collecting the different items during the different legs, that played no role in the end.
Finish Line: The clue just said, travel to The Amazing Race finish line.
1st - Xiu Jie Kai & Alyssa Chia - Prize: Winners Trophy and One Year Supply of HeiHeiRu Products, which winners can choose to donate for Hope Primary School
2nd - Joseph Cheng & Wang Likun
3rd - Wu Minxia & Zhang Xiaocheng
A great season, even if China produces the season in a very different way compared to most traditional TAR series, by featuring these celebrity casts, I am more unlikely to join naysayers when there some sort of different twist regarding casting.
See you for Season 5 em 2018.