Episode IV: A New Hope

Part I:  "Dude, where's my Pinghu?" 

Wow, what a roller-coaster ride.  We started this leg off on the wrong foot, in fact we nearly started it in the wrong city!  So we took a flight back to Shanghai and the clue directed us to Pinghu, a town that nobody had ever heard of.  The race began rather frantically and even the cameramen were not aware that we would begin the race that night as soon as we got our backpacks from the baggage claim.  This would come back to haunt us later in our crazed attempt to reach the ancestral home of Jeremy Lin's grandmother.

The leg money for this portion of the race was 300 RMB.  Our first instinct was to try to take a taxi directly there so we exited the airport and I jumped over the barriers and skipped the long queue to ask a cabbie how much it would be and he quoted me 800 RMB.  Ok that was way over our budget so we had to resort to walking to the train station to try and find a cheaper alternative.  As we waited for the security screening we were relieved to see the Taiwanese Models and the Trainers in line in front of us.  We cleared the metal detectors and headed for the automatic ticket machines.  After a few touches of the screen we soon discovered that the last train to Pinghu was over an hour ago.  We then turn around to try to see what the other two teams were doing and to our dismay there was no sign of them. 

The next stop was the Information Desk and we ask the young teller what would be the best method to travel to Pinghu.  She replied with the Chinese equivalent of "Ping what?" and pulls out this massive book which looks like a Yellow Pages ate an Atlas and starts flipping through these massive pages and then tells us that the next train to Pinghu was tomorrow morning at 6:30 AM.  One thing that you need to understand about China is that folks in the service profession are generally not so helpful and they will only answer a specific question posed directly to them.  This exchange was like a root canal and we finally discerned that there *might* be a long-distance bus that could take us there but the last one was *probably* at 9 PM which only allowed us about 5 minutes to get to the bus depot, figure out where to buy tickets and get on the bus in time.  We ruled this out as well and by this point we had attracted quite a little crowd with our rugged German cameraman Jonas standing behind us with his mini flood-light illuminating these two loud panicked Americans.

One particular gentleman steps up and tells us confidently that he knows how we can get to Pinghu.  He walks us to the ticket window and advises us to buy high-speed train tickets to Hangzhou (about 110 miles from Shanghai) and from there we could take a taxi to get us to Pinghu.  He shows us his ticket and tells us that he will also be on the same train to lend some validation.  After asking a few other bystanders they all agree that Hangzhou is the only option so we proceed to purchase the train tickets.  When the attendant asks for all of our passports, our cameraman starts cursing because he does not have any of his documents since he did not think we would start racing at 8 PM upon landing in Shanghai.  We start arguing with the clerk and the camera assistant busts out her press credentials and starts yelling that we are filming a TV show.  In hindsight, I suppose this should have raised some red flags that a train was not the expected route but we felt like we were really out of options at that point.  When the teller finally agreed to sell us 4 tickets and it was 75 RMB each using up ALL of our leg money, we probably should have regrouped but the race adrenaline had me blindly focused on progressing forward so I handed over all of our money.

At this point, Jenn is in full-on panic mode.  We have no money, no cell phones, no credit cards and we were about to board a train to a city which may or may not get us closer to our final destination.  I was still confident that we could figure something out or perhaps talk our way to a free ride so we went down to the tracks to board our train.  As we were looking for our train car number Jenn overhears a group of people talking about Pinghu.  They must have seen our ordeal upstairs and Jenn jumps inside their circle and asks them if they know how to get to Pinghu.  These 4 nice people renewed my faith in the Chinese people as they asked what we were filming and it turned out they were big fans of the Amazing Race.  We explained our predicament and they confirm that we could take a taxi from Hangzhou to Pinghu.  However, our major obstacle at that point was that we were bankrupt and the nice woman, Sophie, asks if she is allowed to give us money.  The Race Rules clearly stipulated that we could not beg for money UNLESS we were out of funds and there was no other choice.  This obviously met the criteria and we gratefully accepted her help.  She opens her wallet and starts counting bills.  Her friend Kevin confirms that 600 RMB (~$ 95 USD) should be more than enough to get us to Pinghu and she hands us the stack of cash.  I insist on exchanging business cards with her and promise to pay her back once we returned to Shanghai.  (Note: I wired her the funds once we were home and recovered)

Sophie and Kevin tell us that they will meet us on the platform once we arrive and they will help us arrange a taxi to take us to our final destination.  With our coffers replenished, we thanked God for this blessing, and made our way to our assigned seats.  The high-speed train was very nice (akin to the bullet trains in Japan) and we all relaxed a little as we sped towards the next stop in the race.  Thirty minutes later Kevin comes rushing down the aisle and says in Chinese "thank goodness I found you" (uh oh).  He explains that there is one stop before Hangzhou (C) called Yuhang (B) which is even closer to Pinghu (D) and we should get off at that stop instead.  We did not have time to ask for more details since the train was already slowing down and Yuhang was the next stop.  I trusted Kevin and after all they had funded the next portion of our trip so we grabbed our bags and hopped off the train.

At this point it is about 10:30 pm and the station is absolutely deserted.  We find one cab around the corner but he tells us that his battery is dead so we would have to help push the taxi to get it started.  We were desperate so we agreed and once the car was moving we ask him how long it will take to get to Pinghu.  When he tells us 2 hours, our hearts sank.  We thought it would be maybe 20 minutes away and had entertained some fantasies that we might have jumped from last place to maybe the top 5 with our creative travel plans.  When we finally arrived at 1 AM to receive the next clue we were still in dead-last 8th place, ugh.  We found out the next day that most of the other teams had gone to the train station and from that taxi stand the cabs were willing to go for 300 RMB.  I'm still perplexed as to why the airport taxi's would try to gouge passengers but in the end we were no worse off than when we had started.  In 5 hours it would be the beginning of a new race day and we would need to draw some Linspiration to compete fiercely and try to stage a comeback.  Read on below for Part II of our Pinghu Pitfalls.