by  Arthur Perkins
 
Teams are released from the Guilin pit stop after 22 hours !!!(figure that one out; my best guess is that it maximizes the chances for Mark/Michael to become competitive again). This is as follows:
 
Margie/Luke 936am
Jaime/Cara 1030am
Tammy/Victor 1040am
Kisha/Jen 1243pm
Mark/Michael 408pm
 
The clue specifies that teams must connect in Guangzhou. Again, I have no idea why. The next thing you need to know is that If you study the flight combinations Bangkok to Guilin you know immediately that Mark/Michael are toast and essentially have no chance in this episode except a major flight delay for their competition or another non-elimination leg (NEL). The flights out of Bangkok to Guangzhou for the other 4 teams are Margie/Luke on the 1120am flight, Jaime/Cara and Tammy/Victor on the 115pm flight and Kisha/Jen on the 320pm flight. The first 3 teams are supposed to connect in Guanzhou to the 830pm flight to Guilin but it is delayed and actually leaves after the 910pm flight of Kisha/Jen. It must depart before the 1030pm arrival of Mark/Michael or they would have gotten on it. Since they did not, there are no more flights until 940am the next morning, which Mark/Michael are on as they are seen landing in Guilin in daylight and that is the first flight.
 
There is a critical gap of the hours between about 1130pm and the first televised task, to which the 4 teams arrive at different times. That strongly implies that there was a task with Hours of Operation which did not start until early (9am or earlier) the next morning. The next step is an unaired task which had a hours of operation delay until sometime the next morning. I have heard it was climbing 500 steps up Folding Brocade Mountain/Hill (take your pick) along the narrow stone path passing the Face-the-Cloud Pavilion and Over-the-River Pavilion, on the way to the top of the Bright Moon Peak. The Bright Moon Peak is the summit of the hill, where the Catch-the-Cloud Pavilion stands. This occupied teams until maybe 10am when they were finished and ready to go to the cluebox next to Qing Xiu Lu hair salon where the Speed bump will take place later. The clue there sends teams to the #24 bridge over the Li River. There they find another cluebox with a ROADBLOCK "Who's ready for some foul play?" Teams go out together in a boat, then one transfers to a fishing vessel with the fisherman and his cormorant, a fishing bird whose neck is restricted so that it cannot swallow the large fish involved, and a basket to 15 fish. The selected individual tosses fish into the water to attract the attention of the cormorant and then takes them out of its mouth and places into a second basket until 10 are counted. This is an ancient Chinese fishing technique. The teams vary in their effectiveness on this. Luke competes with Tammy, Jaime, and Kisha. He does well, but is bitten by a duck in the area. Jaime and Kisha do OK and Tammy is lagging behind here, her cormorant flies away temporarily and she finishes in fourth place. Teams then go to the Ancient South Gate for a DETOUR of Choreography or Calligraphy.
 
In Choreography, teams take a path to Central Island, observe dozens of dancing couples, get instruction from a man/woman pair of instructors, and then perform in the middle of the many dancing couples and in front of 2 judges. They get rejected twice for their judged performance and Jaime wants to know why, but as is frequently the case in China nobody can speak English (or if they can they don't in order to make this hard for any teams competing here). Jaime/Cara somehow find out that the reason for their rejection was that they did not continue dancing to the end of that dance. Their female dance instructor was shown twice in televised laughter at the hilarity of their dancing. The third time they get it right but are behind the other teams headed for the pit stop.
 
In Calligraphy there are 4 stations and teams have to copy intricate Chinese characters (representing one to three words at each station) closely. When they succeed they get the clue for the next station until they have finished all 4, when they get the pit stop clue.
 
The pit stop is on Banyan Lake with a view of the Sun and Moon Pagodas. Tammy/Victor start slightly ahead but Kisha/Jen pass them easily. Margie/Luke also pass them but by arrival at the pit stop Tammy/Victor are again in second place. The first team to finish is Kisha/Jen. Second by a minor amount is Tammy/Victor. Third was Margie/Luke and fourth was Jaime/Cara. There were two serious shoving matches at earlier clueboxes between Jen and Luke, both of whom are highly competitive and itching for a battle. The word "bitch" is used by Jen against Luke and he overreacts. She explains later it was his actions he was referring to (as in bitching without saying the whole word), so he credibility with me is quite low. When they get to the pit stop Margie is recounting at Phil's request what happened earlier. I feel she is a highly biased observer and she proved that by being petty in her accusations. Then Jen and Kisha act like they are trying to goad Luke into a rash act while all 4 teams are there at the pit stop. They succeed and Luke overreacts and Margie again comes to his defense in a way that makes it obvious she has no objectivity.This was not the battle of the century hyped in CBS pre-episode publicity, but it was riveting television.
 
While this is happening Mark/Michael have landed and play catchup. They first have to do a Speed Bump of washing and drying the hair of two old ladies. This looks like it would take no more than 15 minutes and there is no transportation to make it longer. They next fish with a cormorant and then they elect Choreography and finish that quickly (with the dance judges probably told there is no reason to be objective since their team was certain to finish last). They get to the pit stop and do finish last. They wait to hear the magic words, non-elimination leg, but it isn't happening as they are eliminated. They apparently finished maybe 30 minutes behind Jaime/Cara.

(Photo courtesy of CBS)

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