Beijing Express

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Peking Express was an adventure - show that from May to July 2005 at RTL aired. Eight couples competed to cover a distance of around 10,000 km from Moscow to Beijing .

General

The race started in August 2004 and lasted a total of 43 days. The eight couples had to get from Moscow to Beijing in twelve stages . They had to deal with all kinds of problems. This included the lack of knowledge of the respective national language , the changing climate , illnesses and the daily organization of a place to sleep. The meager equipment included maps in the local language, a Cyrillic alphabet , a piece of paper on which their situation was explained in the local language and a budget of one euro per day and person.

The series was inspired by Jerry Bruckheimer's The Amazing Race , which however has a slightly modified concept.

Peking Express was moderated by Patrice Bouédibéla . The theme song is "Summon the Worms" by Brian Tyler from the Children of Dune album .

Rules of the game

Stages

Each episode showed a stage that was completed in three or four days. Players were only allowed to hitchhike and hitchhike during the day . At night they had to find a place to sleep with the locals themselves. Each couple was accompanied by a camera team . The employees were not allowed to communicate with the candidates or help them. At night, the candidates were alone with their respective hosts.

Whoever reached the stage goal first became the stage winner. There was a ranking list up to the seventh stage. Points were distributed according to the order in which the couples arrived at the respective stage finish. This also resulted in the order to start the next stage (time advantage). The couple who had the fewest points at the end of a so-called “elimination stage” had to end the race.

A simple knockout system applied from the eighth stage. Now, at the end of every second stage (9th and 11th stage), the team that reached the finish last had to leave. The last two remaining couples contested the final in Beijing.

Amulets and bonuses

The amulet games that took place in a place in the middle of the stage were about money. In the first stages, all pairs still in the race took part in the games, later only the two pairs who were the first to reach the venue. The last two amulet games took place at the finals in Beijing. Each amulet was worth 10,000 €, a total of ten amulets, i.e. up to 100,000 €, could be won. The money was paid to the couple who won the finals in Beijing . If a couple who owned amulets were eliminated en route, they had to hand them over to a couple of their choice. If the couple had more than one amulet, they had to give them all to a single couple.

The first two or three pairs to arrive at the venue took part in the “ bonus games”. The winning pair got a distance advantage.

final

At the end of the last stage, the final took place in Beijing. The two couples still in play had to follow various instructions across the Chinese capital. The last amulet games took place in two places. Anja and Marc reached the finish (drum tower) as the first couple and thus won the race and € 90,000.

Candidates

The following couples were involved in the race. They are ranked according to their success.

Stages

The stages led through Russia , Mongolia and China :

Russia

Mongolia

China

Reactions

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Beijing Express was announced by the hosting TV broadcaster RTL as "the greatest adventure of your life". The same show (with other candidates) had previously (2004) run on Belgian and Dutch television (in cooperation) with great success, where there was even a second season (2005) from Beijing to Mumbai and a third season ( Peking Express - de Mekong Route - 2006 ) from the mouth of the Mekong River in Vietnam along this through Vietnam, Cambodia , Laos and China to the destination at the source in Tibet . The final took place in the capital Lhasa . The fourth season ( Peking Express - VIPS ), starring celebrities, traveled through India and aired in the summer / fall of 2006. In 2007, the fifth season ran, in which the candidates hitchhiked South America from east to west.

Peking Express was also very successful in France in 2006 and a second season, like the Himalaya Route in Holland / Belgium, ran in 2007. The fifth season has now been broadcast (as of June 2010). In addition, Peking Express is now running in Sweden, Denmark, Norway (co-production) and Spain.

At RTL, on the other hand, Beijing Express only had moderate ratings for the station. An originally planned making-of was not broadcast. One of the reasons for this failure may have been false expectations on the part of the audience. In the past few years, reality shows had been through formats like Big Brother and I'm a Star - Get Me Out of Here! get a negative image. The RTL format showed weaknesses in implementation compared to the squadrons of the other countries, as the focus was less on the travel experiences of the participants and more on the disputes between the teams.

However, the candidates all came to a positive conclusion. In addition to many geographical sights such as Lake Baikal and the Great Wall of China , she was particularly impressed by the great hospitality and support from the local population. The majority of the participants were dissatisfied with the implementation by RTL.

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