"The Hilton dominates over our old place, and there's free breakfast," says Hudd.

"We didn't know about the villa when we applied," says Anna. "But we gave ourselves the ultimatum: By the end of the month if we don't have job or something going on, then we would return to the States. Then we went online and found this."

The couple say they are huge fans of reality TV shows and always wanted to be contestants. "This is like a dream and a life saver," Anna says.

For mother-and-son team Norma and David Bowman, getting involved in a reality TV show, at least for David, was a surprise.

David says his mother signed him up without his knowledge in hopes that the grueling race might toughen and sharpen him up.

"He's a very nice boy and girls take advantage of him," says the mother, an elementary teacher at Shanghai Bilingual School. At 49, she is the oldest competitor.

"So maybe the show will make him a little bit tougher," says the former aerobics instructor.

For local competitor AJ Chen, speaking Shanghainese hasn't given him the edge he had expected. Teamed with Marilyn Monroe impersonator Rebecca Miller from the UK, he says the long distances the show covers each day make it difficult for even a local to navigate.

"There are districts I have never been to and have absolutely no idea about," says Chen, a Chinese teacher in a language institute.

Shanghai is so big and he only knows districts close to home. "With Shanghainese, you try and talk to people to get more information, but it hasn't seemed to help."

Each day a team is eliminated and Miller says the competitiveness between the remaining teams has sharpened. On the two days Shanghai Daily visited filming, there was a marked change in the atmosphere. At first teams were more relaxed and chatted with each other prior to beginning the day's race. But later in the week, they were all business and there was little banter among contestants.

"Before I was in the show, I thought it would be a laugh, you know, meet a few people, see a bit of the city," says Miller, who impersonated Monroe and Cyndi Lauper in a Shanghai restaurant to help pay for her Chinese studies.

"But once you get into it, this is intense and we just want this ride to continue," she adds.

(Shanghai Daily March 25, 2009)