I think it helps that it’s actually prepared food rather than a bowl of live insects or something. Those locusts didn’t look horrible and I’m kind of curious what starfish tastes like.
Then they shouldn’t have gone.
Really–it’s only been 20 years and it’s waaaaaay too soon to forget. Riding and singing your way through Tienanmen Square on a cheery bike and ignoring the massacre is like having a task where you have to set up a picnic near the Babi Yar ravine or having to learn doing a happy local folk dance in The Killing Fields or going to Gisenyi (Rwanda) and have a task where you teach a puppy to play “fetch” among the mass-graves.
I can see what you’re saying about Victor per-se (sorta–frankly I think you’re giving the clueless doof waaaaay too much credit, but you’re a kinder man than I am jayjay 
) but it was a repugnant choice by the normally Amazing Producers to help the murderers of Tienanmen Square whitewash their history.
You can go to China and not mention Tienanmen Square, but you can’t (or shouldn’t) go to Tienanmen Square without mentioning the mass-murder.
Ya know, all things considered, I’d pee on just about anyone for a million bucks!
I’ve seen several travel shows that either omit that or simply gloss over it. It may have been the site of a terrible event 20 years ago, but it’s also a place of nearly 700 years of Chinese history in a place that is a national treasure for the people there.
Like JayJay said, I think the association of Tienanmen Square with “slaughter” is largely a Western thing. I think the reason they didn’t look at it in that light is probably the same reason why the student protestors chose that as the site of their protest in the first place - it’s a place of Chinese pride.
Neither right nor wrong in my opinion.
I have to wonder how old Victor was when all that happened anyway. A young kid wouldn’t necessarily “get it” and as has been said, there’s been a lot more history that’s happened there than just that one (horrific) thing.
New Race rule: if you have to, pee your pants! You can always wash up later!
You know, amusing as that is, I’m going to be a little put off if next season’s teams are all sporting Depends.
He’s 35, so he would have been 15 when it happened. It was the lead story on every newspaper, magazine, news show etc. for the entire time it happened, so unless he was being raised in a bubble, he must have been exposed to it. I have to admit that I did proclaim in a Victor voice “Look at all the pretty soldiers preparing to slaughter the masses and crush all dissent!”
I’m confused about the timing of this leg. Last week, according to the recap on the CBS website, they landed in Beijing at 8:00 PM. They did some driving around, did the foot massage, more driving, then swimming, then more driving, then found Phil for the Amazing Twist. Say 3-4 hours for all that - the foot massage was only 10 minutes, and both Luke & Margie and Jaime & Cara breezed through the swimming challenge as well. So we’re at 11:00-12:00.
Then they have to search for a gnome in some shops. They’re still in Beijing. Don’t know if there’s a section of Beijing where the shops stay open all night, or if the producers arranged for them to be open, but they find them. Say 2 hours at the outside for that, so we’re at 1-2 AM. Then they have to take a cab to another part of Beijing to ride electric bikes. By the time they get there, it’s daylight! According to wikipedia, this season was filmed in November 2008, so sunrise would have been around 7 AM. What happened in the missing 5-6 hours?
I seem to remember someone saying in last week’s thread that there was a challenge that didn’t make the show last Sunday. That could take up a few hours and bring us to daylight.
What was up with the one cabbie who didn’t know where the stadium was? That’s got to be the most famous building in the country.
He’s 35? I thought he was younger than I am. Oops. That still doesn’t bother me much, though I’m not sure why.
Eh. That’s just Victor. He’s like that. He was bouncing all around tab last weekend at the California High School Speech Championships. Victor being Victor.
What surprised me was that Victor and Tammy seemed like the only people who could pronounce Tiananmen.
I forgot to say: elsewhere it was pointed out that they may well have been told not to bring the issue up on camera. And it did look like a neat ceremony to watch.
This is a consideration, also. I imagine they’re all told not to get political on-camera, if only to prevent bad feelings between the teams when you get a serious rightie couple and a serious leftie couple. There really is a functional difference between what they did at Auschwitz (or in Senegal with the slave house) and what they could do in China. Both the European and the African situations are far enough removed in both time and government overturn that the former two are much less of a sore tooth for the governments of those countries than the Tiananmen massacre would be for the Chinese government.
I understand the “then don’t go there” sentiment, but, again, there’s so much history and culture centered on Tiananmen that you’re really not “getting” Beijing if you don’t at least go through the square. As has been posted, the equation of Tiananmen Square = 1989 Massacre is a pretty much a Western thing. The massacre is a small part of the history of Tiananmen as far as Chinese culture goes.
Couldn’t read English & didn’t understand the sisters’ pronunciation of it? They may have been asking for the aardvark sodomy building for all we know.
But the National Aardvark Sodomy Building or the Beijing Aardvark Sodomy Building? You have to be specific.
Yeah, pointing at the name of the building as its written in English on the clue would work, if they were in a country that used the English alphabet. In China…not so much.
In defense of Victor. He very well may have been more sensitive. We have no idea what the Amazing Editors left out.
Was anyone else amused by the part in the previews where Cara and Jamie are showing that even in America, where is it to be assumed that the cab drivers speak the same language, they can’t deal with cab drivers?
As for the Tiananmen square being equated with a massacre in many people’s minds, but not necessarily in all. I went to Kent State.
I liked the bit in the cab (in the previews) “Ma’am, I’m not your personal concierge”.
Will we FINALLY get what we’ve always wanted to see? A cabbie dump an obnoxious racer on the side of the road saying “No fare is worth this shit”?