A Farewell Is a Star's Last Scene on Stage, and Only a Good One Gets Remembered

"When you say goodbye, mean it. Say one more thing, because it may be the last thing you say; take one more look, because it may be the last look you get."

Jon Stewart leaves The Daily Show, and 16 years of big-name colleagues come back

On the evening of August 6, US time, Jon Stewart (whom Chinese fans call "Jiong Situ") hosted his last episode of The Daily Show. The time had finally come to say goodbye to "Uncle Jiong."

The show, which premiered in 1996, is one of the most popular and influential talk shows in the United States. Its stock in trade is sharp-tongued commentary that skewers politicians, fellow journalists and the entertainment business. Stewart hosted it for more than 16 years and was credited with "changing the way young people get their news." He won eleven Emmys in a row.

The final episode opened with Stewart, as usual, mocking the Republican presidential debate, which he called "unbelievably brilliant." The next 20 minutes were a happy reunion of old colleagues. Over 16 years Stewart had discovered, and then sent off, wave after wave of correspondents who are now film actors, Disney stars and hosts of their own talk shows: Steve Carell, star of The Office; Ed Helms of The Hangover; Josh Gad, the voice of Olaf in Frozen; and the hugely popular hosts John Oliver and Stephen Colbert, whom Chinese fans call "Kou Kou Bear." They all came back! Political heavyweights such as Hillary Clinton also appeared on screen to say goodbye.

With so many stars on stage, the episode was one round of cheering and heckling after another. Stewart stayed calm and kept hosting. But at the end his old colleague and close friend Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, delivered the closing "farewell address" on behalf of the show's staff. The sharp-tongued host, trying not to cry, did his best to cut him off. "There's nothing you can do," Colbert said, "because nobody works for you anymore!"

The finale drew 3.5 million viewers, the second-largest audience in the history of the flagship show, behind only the episode with Barack Obama just before the 2008 election.

Another veteran of American talk shows also left this year: David Letterman said goodbye to the Late Show in May. He is 69, has won more than 10 Emmys, and brought CBS US$120 million a year in advertising revenue.

"You know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life? Social media," he said on his last show, answering his own question.

David Letterman

So Stewart and Letterman both got their farewell shows. Both had hinted at leaving before: Stewart once stepped away for a while to make a film, and Letterman is simply getting old. But they and their audiences alike needed a grand farewell to close the chapter. Done well, the leaving itself feels right.

A farewell is the last big scene a star plays before leaving the stage. Hosts leave flagship shows, actors leave the screen, singers put down the microphone, athletes leave the field... They have achieved something in their fields and become stars in the public eye. Without a curtain call, it feels as if they have short-changed both themselves and their fans.

So let's look back at how some stars made their exits.

Oprah's 2011 farewell show, with Tom Hanks as her host

Any talk of farewell shows has to include Oprah.

The Oprah Winfrey Show has been called the highest-rated talk show in television history. It aired in more than 140 countries and regions and drew an average of 33 million viewers a week. Time wrote: "It is clearly far more than a TV show... It is a spiritual symbol, perhaps even America's largest unofficial religion."

On May 18, 2011, Tom Hanks hosted the taping of Oprah's farewell special at the United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls. The Oprah Winfrey Show was ending after 25 years on the air.

Thirteen thousand people sat in the stands to witness Oprah's farewell. The guests were all big names: Madonna, Will Smith, Halle Berry, Beyoncé, Michael "Air" Jordan... One American columnist joked: Would God show up?

If Oprah ran for president, plenty of people would probably back her. Her odds would surely be a good deal better than Donald Trump's.

Oprah's farewell show

An episode of Chibi Maruko-chan about Momoe Yamaguchi's farewell concert

In one episode of the cartoon Chibi Maruko-chan, Maruko makes a special trip to Tokyo to see Momoe Yamaguchi's farewell concert. Back home, she spends days lost in sadness and envy, endlessly planning a farewell of her own.

The concert was Yamaguchi's 1980 farewell show, "From Legend to Myth," at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo.

After her last song, she laid the microphone down on the stage: she would never pick it up again.

In the audience sat stars she had worked with: Shinji Tanimura, Mitsuko Mori, Hideki Saijo and Tomokazu Miura. That November, Yamaguchi married Miura, left show business, and never came back.

Yamaguchi debuted in 1972. She spent only eight years in show business, yet she became an actress and singer all of Asia remembers.

She really did "leave her most beautiful self on the stage."

Momoe Yamaguchi

Stars hold concerts to remember Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui

Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui both held farewell concerts too.

In 1989, at the height of his career, Cheung chose to quit music because he was worn out. His rivalry with Alan Tam had become fierce, and their fans were constantly feuding. He was 33 that year, so he gave 33 "Farewell to the Music Scene" concerts in a row at the Hong Kong Coliseum in Hung Hom. Afterwards he turned to film, making Days of Being Wild and Farewell My Concubine.

On April Fools' Day, April 1, 2003, Cheung jumped from the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Central, Hong Kong. That was the way he chose to make his final exit.

In November 2003, Anita Mui held her "Classic Golden Hits Concert," which became the last performance of both her career and her life. She already knew she had cancer, but decided to sing to the end. She died in Hong Kong that December.

In March and December 2013, the "Continue to Love Ten Years" concert and the "Anita Mui 10 Years of Missing You" concert were held, with stars singing the two singers' songs to mark ten years since their deaths.

And every April 1, large numbers of people still post a picture on Weibo and Moments with a single word, "Gege" ("big brother"), to remember Leslie Cheung, who died too young.

Leslie Cheung in concert

Anita Mui in concert

Oasis broke up, but fans won't leave the brothers alone

Oasis is one of Britain's most popular and most critically acclaimed bands, and it did much to push British guitar-pop to its peak.

The band announced its breakup at the end of August 2009, after its two core members, Noel and Liam Gallagher, had a furious row before a show in Paris that ended in a fistfight. The next day Noel Gallagher said on the band's official website that he had been "forced" to quit Oasis.

In a 2010 interview with The New York Times, Liam Gallagher said: "It's the best thing that's ever happened. Oasis is history now. When you think about it, it's pretty cool."

Yet the two keep swinging between venomous jabs and faint longing, wishing each other a happy Christmas and hinting that a reunion is not entirely off the table.

Fans say they have had enough, too: "When they were in the same band they acted out a martial-arts film; now they've split, they're staging a Qiong Yao tearjerker. The younger brother should release a new album called Big Brother, Love Me Once More."

The Oasis brothers

For the last episode of Friends, Americans watched live on big outdoor screens

What is your favorite American TV series?

Ask that question, and many people still name Friends.

The show premiered on NBC on September 22, 1994 and ended on May 6, 2004, after 10 seasons and 236 episodes; every season ranked in that year's top ten. In 2007 TV Guide ranked the 100 greatest American TV shows of all time, and Friends came first.

Over ten years, six friends quarrel, travel and throw parties, marry, have kids and change jobs. Rachel and Ross break up and get back together, again and again. Monica wins countless games. Chandler goes from fat to thin and back a few times, and still nobody knows what he does for a living. Phoebe gets married. Joey is still the worst actor.

All good things must come to an end. When the last episode aired, 52.5 million people watched it live. Many American cities showed it on big outdoor screens, and people gathered as if for a World Cup final to say goodbye to the show.

The series ended, but the actors' careers went on. Every so often, posts titled "What the Friends Cast Is Doing Now" make the rounds online. In 2014, for the show's tenth anniversary, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow made a cameo on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and staged a reunion skit.

In China, too, some phenomenally popular TV dramas keep coming up: CCTV's Journey to the West, The New Legend of Madame White Snake, the original Dream of the Red Chamber, My Fair Princess... Many talk shows invite the casts back for reunions as a draw.

Friends says goodbye

Hayao Miyazaki retires, and finding a successor becomes the biggest problem

On September 6, 2013, Hayao Miyazaki held a press conference to announce his retirement, accompanied by Toshio Suzuki, producer of his latest animated film, The Wind Rises.

Miyazaki said: "I have announced my retirement several times before and caused quite a stir. Some people may say, 'Here he goes again,' but this time I really have decided to retire. After Ponyo, I spent five years preparing and making The Wind Rises. My next film might take more than five years, probably seven or eight. In eight years I'll be 80, and I never imagined working that long. My era of making animated films is over."

In 1985 Miyazaki co-founded Studio Ghibli with Isao Takahata. He leaves behind outstanding animated features such as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, work that truly "defined an era." His farewell film, The Wind Rises, won both critics and audiences, taking 12 billion yen in Japan to become the country's highest-grossing film of 2013.

But that raised the next question: who would succeed him at Ghibli?

Hiromasa Yonebayashi was once seen as the best candidate, but his 2014 film When Marnie Was There flopped at the box office. Miyazaki's eldest son, Goro Miyazaki, directed From Up on Poppy Hill in 2011, but has always been seen as falling short of his father.

Miyazaki is getting old: who can make animation like his? Jin Yong is getting old: who can write martial-arts novels like his?

A retirement that stirs this kind of worry: perhaps that is the ultimate goal for any creator.

The Wind Rises

Furious 7 kept Paul Walker, and with him the fans and the box office

This was a tragic goodbye. On November 30, 2013, Paul Walker died in a car crash in Los Angeles, aged just 40. Furious 7, originally due out in July 2014, had to halt production.

The studio did everything it could to keep Walker in the film. He had finished some scenes before he died; the crew brought in his two younger brothers, Cody and Caleb Walker, as stand-ins, and reused footage from the previous six films.

The result is that audiences walking into the cinema still see Paul racing, fighting and falling in love, as if nothing had happened. The ending was rewritten so that Paul's character retires to live with his family. In the final shot, everyone watches together as Paul walks happily along a beach with his wife.

That is why some fans saw the film two or three times, adding to the box office: to see Paul a few more times, so that when he is missing from Fast 8, they will still have this scene to remember.

Paul Walker

Beckham and Zidane: two last matches with completely different moods

Athletes' exits are crueler than those of actors and singers, because their bodies, and above all their injuries, decide for them. For a football star, the last match is the farewell press conference.

In May 2013, David Beckham announced he would retire at the end of the season. In his last match, the coach sent him out as captain; the score no longer mattered. He waved goodbye to the fans, and his teammates tossed him into the air, the highest tribute they could pay. His family was there too.

That is how a farewell match should go. Now for Zinedine Zidane's last World Cup match.

The 2006 World Cup final was the last game of his playing career. He had a chance to win France a second world title, and even if he failed, he could have left with regret but with honor. Instead Zidane headbutted an opponent to the ground and was sent off. He left the pitch with the result still undecided: no applause, no embraces, no cheers. He did not even attend the trophy ceremony.

And so one of the best midfielders in history made his exit.

Yao Ming, Liu Xiang, Li Na: different endings for China's first generation of commercial sports stars

Yao Ming, Liu Xiang and Li Na are the three most influential Chinese sports stars of recent years. Each set records in competition, each went through slumps, and each faced the controversies that come with fame. Now all three have retired, and all three, by their own account, because of injury.

They left in different ways.

Yao Ming's retirement was the most conventional: a press conference. On July 20, 2011, Yao announced his retirement at a press conference in Shanghai, citing injuries to his left foot. But he hinted to the more than 400 reporters present that he had long since planned his future: "I think life is like a guide who opens one door after another. Today I retire; one door closes and another opens."

Yao Ming's retirement press conference

Liu Xiang announced his retirement in a long Weibo post. On April 7, 2015, he posted a message titled "My Track! My Hurdles!": "Goodbye! My track, my hurdles. From today, I will end my professional sports career and officially retire... Though I am reluctant, though it hurts, I have no choice."

Netizens mocked the post, crammed with exclamation marks and emotional description, as "obviously never touched by a PR team, written like a primary-school essay."

That was when he formally said "goodbye," but for most viewers his best years had ended long before. He had abruptly pulled out of both the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics, which drew a great deal of controversy.

Liu Xiang withdraws from a race

He was once the most popular track-and-field star in the country, endorsing 12 top brands in 2012, including Coca-Cola, Lenovo, Yili and BMW. But his exit was not a dignified farewell. Today people mention only his withdrawals and the negative stories about his love life, which his former fans find a pity.

Li Na, by contrast, left with far more goodwill.

In July 2014, Li announced she was pulling out of the North American season because of injury. In September she held a retirement ceremony at the China Open, saying goodbye to tennis alongside 35 WTA players and nearly 10,000 fans in the stadium. It is the most glorious send-off an athlete can have.

Li Na's retirement

Because she endorsed as many as 18 brands, her retirement also set off joint marketing campaigns. Nike was first, with an ad praising Li with the line "If you're going to do it, be the bird that sticks its neck out." It caught the public mood and lifted the image of both the brand and Li.

Her influence lasts to this day. She has set up her own tennis school and has a salad named after her. Peter Chan has also announced that he will adapt her autobiography into a film, due out in 2016.