Reality TV, China-style

They may not have "Survivor" or "Big Brother." And they definitely don't have The Donald. But Chinese television viewers are about to get "Da Tiao Zhan," or "Quest U.S.A."

It's the first Chinese reality show to be shot in the United States, and filming began yesterday in Boston, where the cast introduced themselves -- in Mandarin Chinese -- and competed in a "Survivor"-like challenge, a relay race in Roxbury.

"Inside China, everybody knows Times Square and Washington, D.C.," assistant producer Sarah Zhang said. "But Boston has some kind of special position among American cities. It's very historic."

Quest essentially chronicles a seven-day road trip from Boston to Miami, with four teams made up of two men and one woman competing for points in various challenges along the way. The teams, which are named for the birthplaces of their members -- Team Hong Kong, Team Taiwan, Team China, and Team U.S.A. -- planned to play mini-baccarat last night at Foxwoods Resort Casino, construct wooden barrels today in Mystic, Conn., and, after a brief scavenger hunt in New York City, have a cow-milking contest in the Amish countryside.

The team with the most points at the end wins a grand-prize package of unspecified value provided by the show's sponsors.

Just as in American reality television programs, director Steve Chu said, Quest's success depends on casting. Like in MTV's "Road Rules" or CBS's "The Amazing Race," dynamics between contestants provide the key drama and conflict in the series, often more than the challenges in which contestants compete.

But where American reality shows have sometimes been known for courting hard-core controversy, such as casting a gay teen suffering from AIDS alongside a homophobic teen or a suicidal punk rocker alongside a bubbly cheerleader type, Chu said Quest's character pairings are a little more subtle, mainly because Chinese viewers are more conservative.

"On Team Taiwan, we teamed a real go-getter up with a really laid-back-type personality," Chu said. "On another team, we put a really extroverted person with a really shy guy."

But nearly every show has to have an "Omarosa" of sorts, he admitted, someone similar to "The Apprentice" contestant who caused conflict on the show by complaining about racist insults and lying to her castmates.

Some Quest cast members deduced yesterday that their version of that character -- a decidedly more subtle one, though -- might be Dorothy Liao. A 27-year-old graduate student at Harvard University, Liao sat apart from her Team China mates during filming breaks yesterday and claimed one of them, Rudy Zhao, was too outgoing for her taste.

"He's too talkative," she snapped, as Zhao, a 34-year-old hospital researcher from New York introduced himself to the cameras rolling in front of the State House.

Host David Wu, a onetime VJ for MTV Asia and star of "Farewell My Concubine," said he can't wait to see what happens on Team China.

"What I would like to see is them slapping each other before this is over," joked Wu, who was born in Southbridge and raised in Taiwan.

"Every team's got their character. I think it's kind of fun."

All the cast members live in the United States and so are somewhat Westernized, Wu said, and therefore less shy in front of the cameras.

In Greater China, such a show would have trouble finding cast members because of shyness.

"In Taiwan, if you put cameras on a crowd of people," Wu explained, "they would all just disperse like the Red Sea."

And yet because all but the Team U.S.A. contestants were born and raised in Asia, he said, many retain strong cultural norms from their home countries, which could provide a unique snapshot of the individual level of tensions between Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.

"There's a lot of historical baggage built in," Chu said. "But we are making a conscious effort to depoliticize the show. We actually don't want to highlight the artificial differences between people. Instead we want to focus on deeper, more human conflicts."

Quest is set to air in the United States on the International Channel and on Chinese-language stations in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Hawaii. The show's New York-based production company, House Films, is negotiating with several Asian satellite channels to air Quest in Asia, executive producer Ric Dilanni said.

During the past few years, specialists say, the Chinese government has been more open to reality television programming. The extent of the genre in China is limited, though, and consists mostly of game-show-type programs, said Michelle Sie Whitten, chief executive officer of US-based Encore International, one of the largest providers of international programming for Chinese television.

There are no beauty or home-and-garden makeover shows, Whitten said, though many people are talking about doing them. Something similar to the popular PBS-TV "Antiques Roadshow" series gained popularity, she said, but instead of average citizens showing up with artifacts found in their attics for appraisal, scholars talked about artifacts, "comparing this type of wood to that one."

"Whenever there's anything new that hasn't been done in China before, it takes a while," Whitten said. "It's a lot of hard work to be a pioneer."

Prime-time television in China is dominated by action-packed costume dramas and historical stories.

Quest viewers will have to settle for historical backdrops. The cast spent much of the morning yesterday on Beacon Hill, where they shot introductions in the Public Garden and next to Senator John F. Kerry's house in Louisburg Square. Team U.S.A. won the first challenge, a relay race at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center. Emotions were running high among the contestants, not least of all for Team Taiwan's "go-getter."

"Here we are in Boston," Talbott Lin, a 26-year-old from Los Angeles, said in Mandarin Chinese during his introduction. "It's like falling in love again -- you have a lot of expectations, but you don't want to get hurt."

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.