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Hello, good people, and welcome back to an extremely late edition of the Survivor: China recap. My apologies for being so sporadic with the recaps, I've been slammed. I'm hoping to get back on track with tonight's episode. But before we get to that, we need to cover last week's episode. And before that, we need to do a quick review of the episode prior to that. Previously on Survivor: Erik and Jamie have a love connection, Denise and James almost have a love connection, Zhan Hu trades Sherea and Frosti for James and Aaron, Jean-Robert alienates himself even further, PG and Jamie throw a challenge and Aaron will have to hang ten in the Loser's Lounge. This week we've been promised a Gross Food Challenge and come on...isn't that enough? Let's find out!

We begin this episode at Zhan Hu. It's early morning and while everyone sleeps, James is once again tending the fire and getting camp life ready. PG tells us that she feels real good about dumping Aaron and her hope for a ten person merge, sans James, is still alive. James tells us he's just gonna keep everyone rested so there are no excuses in the challenges, cause one more loss and he's gone.

We come back from the credits to Fei Long. OH BOY! It's another "let's focus on Jean-Robert snoring" segment. After that, Todd pulls Amanda aside and tells her about the hidden immunity idol. He tells her he was planning on telling her after he found the idol, but since he can't find it, he needs her help. Todd tells us that if Fei Long wins immunity, they'll kidnap either James or Aaron (whichever is left) and try to get the fourth clue from him so they can finally find the idol. And with that...

Probst sighting!! For today's reward challenge, both tribes will race through an abandoned village looking for puzzle boards. They'll go in one at a time and bring the boards back. Once they have all eight boards, they'll use them to decode a phrase made famous by Confucius. So you know what I'm talking about, the boards are just a random string of letters, but when entered into the puzzle board correctly, will mesh with other letters to spell out the famous phrase. Wanna know what they're playing for? The winning tribe will be taken to a tea house on a nearby island. They'll get a bath/shower, a toilet with toilet paper and some tea and a light snack. Plus they'll get to kidnap a member of the losing tribe. Fei Long gets to sit people out and they choose Denise, Amanda and Courtney to sit out. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait just a minute. There's been a rule since the very first season that players can not sit out back to back challenges. Well, Courtney sat out the immunity challenge last time. I remember this because I thought it was stupid. Anyway...if Courtney sat out the last immunity challenge, how the hell was she allowed to sit out of this one? I realize it's rather small, but it's another instance of the producers of this show toying around with or looking the other way when a tribe circumvents the rules. Courtney should not have been allowed to sit out this challenge and that's all I have to say about that.

This is a boring challenge to watch and easy challenge to describe. People run into and out of buildings. They find boards or don't find boards. The only thing of interest is when PG and Sherea end up in the same room and PG decides to talk strategy. She tells Sherea that they're all good and they're still with her and Frosti. She asks her to tell Frosti that. The interesting thing about the conversation is that Sherea completely ignores PG as if she isn't even talking. You could see the concern in PG's eyes. I swear, if you could read her thoughts, what you would have heard was, "Wow, Jim over at Box Office Prophets is right...you really never should throw a challenge. It will always come back to bite you in the ass later." Oh yeah, back to the challenge. The tribes are tied at seven planks each. Fei Long gets their eighth first, but Zhan Hu is right behind. Once the puzzle is figured out, Fei Long discovers the phrase is, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." As promised, they bring James home. And there is much rejoicing.

When we come back from the 347,295th promo for the Amazing Race, we join Fei Long on their reward. Jean-Robert is talking about how excited they all are. Especially for the showers. He talks about how everyone was so happy there. As the tribe is greeted, they see all sorts of toiletries and are ecstatic. After some tea and Danish, they all jump into tubs and start to get clean. Courtney and Amanda end up sharing a tub, which brings about the "creepy stalker guy" moment of the week as JR makes a comment about how their tub is the most attractive tub to jump in. Courtney, of course, is completely annoyed and she tells us how he's a horrible person and she doesn't like him. As everyone bathes, James gets up to take a shower and strips down nekkid. This of course has the ladies talking about his butt. (But Jean-Robert is the pervert, right?)

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