I recently made a list about the best seasons to watch for people who are just starting to get into Survivor and—while I fully stand by my list—a lot of fans were quick to point out that Survivor: China needs to be on that list. But, does it?
While there’s no doubt China was a great season of the show when it originally aired, there’s a lot of wide debate on whether or not it holds up today. And after rewatching the season, I can say that it does…and it doesn’t…
As such a universally praised season in the Survivor fan community, I had higher hopes diving back into it. While many consider it a masterpiece of the show’s history that is often included on people’s “Top 10” list of seasons, I think, comparatively, there are stronger seasons out there. But that doesn’t mean that China is one of the worst seasons…it’s far from that. I’d personally ranked it in my top 30% of best seasons of Survivor, no question.
But what exactly about Survivor: China made fans fall in love with it and why are those things not necessarily helping to categorize it as one of the greatest seasons of all time? Let’s talk about it…
The Cast
Survivor: China has, without a doubt, a great cast. What many fans would call a “no-dud” season, we got some of our favorite Survivor personalities on this season. A man named “Chicken.” The sassiest castaway of all-time, Courtney Yates. A charming gravedigger who went home with two idols in his pocket, James Clement. And the fan-favorite strategic sweetheart, Amanda Kimmel.
But while the cast is awesome, we get to a point in the season (post-merge) where things start to feel…expected. While there were some great blindsides, in the end we saw the same thing play out that we did on the very first season of Survivor. One tribe just picked off the other until we got a Final Four made up of original Fei Long members.
And yes, alliances are a huge part of Survivor, so this makes sense, but when eliminations become predictable, it just lowers the excitement of the season. Though we did get a great winner with Todd Herzog, delivering one of the best Final Tribal Council performances of all time, it would have been fun to see his alliance try to turn on him rather than basically handing him $1 million by helping him get to the end.
The Location
One of our favorite locations in the history of the show, this season was filmed along the banks of the Zhelin Reservoir in Jiangxi, China and our players were really given an opportunity to get immersed in the culture while playing the game. There were challenges that integrated traditional Chinese elements like the Dragon Dance, trivia about Chinese inventions, authentic local cuisine, and shuriken throwing.
Even the classic “outwit, outplay, outlast,” slogan of the season was changed to Chinese characters that roughly translated to “compete in intelligence, compete in skill, compete in endurance.” Not only were the players getting to experience a new culture, but the fans at home did, too. That was awesome to be a part of as a viewer.
But looking back now, it’s really disheartening to see a handful of players who couldn’t care less about the fact that they were in China getting to experience so many once-in-a-lifetime moments that people watching at home would only ever dream about. The casual insensitivity of the culture just feels kind of gross since it absolutely wasn’t necessary to advance in the game.
The Twist
Production attempted a new take on the classic Survivor tribe swap by allowing each tribe to choose two players from the other tribe to swap. Of course, this basically just set up an opportunity for players to eliminate the people they saw as the biggest threats in the game.
The new tribes were made up of majority original members with two new outsiders. In fact, the Zhan Hu tribe went so far as to throw the next challenge in order to eliminate one of their new tribe mates. And they planned to do it again, but unfortunately pretty much none of the members of Fei Long could hold down the Chinese cuisine presented to them during the following food challenge and it would have been too obvious for Zhan Hu to just…not eat…
The Conclusions
Overall, this is a good season of Survivor, but I wouldn’t say it’s one of the greatest of all time. The highlights of the season fall to the quirky characters and the incredible location rather than any actual gameplay. I’d argue that the most memorable thing to come out of Survivor: China was the historic moment James got eliminated with two immunity idols in his bag.
But other than that, when you think of Survivor: China, do you really remember any of the details? But if we’re pitching season themes for production to use as inspiration in the new “open era,” we definitely want to see more immersion in the culture for our players. That was without a doubt the ultimate strength of this season.
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