Update:

Kayak emailed me back during my trip and agreed that something was amiss and they would follow up.

For better or for worse, Kayak is still (at least, partially) broken.

Consider these, for example:

WAS-PEK or JAX-PEK, 10/8,9,10

Both the $744 in the case of the former and the $850 in the case of the latter are complete fantasy. In reality, there is nothing on offer below ~$1600. As far as I can tell, the brunt of the blame lies with Orbitz/Cheaptickets, but remain loath to let Kayak off the hook so easily because they acknowledged this issue 5 days ago, yet it still continues to create noise in their search results.

Incidentally, I'm now finding out that leaving China before the National Holiday is expensive this year and returning afterwards is even moreso. The good news is that I have been making progress on the award ticket front going back. The best I've found thus far is 15k BD miles plus $400 for JFK-PEK with a 1.5 hour layover. Sure, I don't fancy getting to JFK on my own, but am up for the task if doing so means saving $1000.