Update: *The Last Night of Kangxi Coming* Has Aired, and This Time It Really Is Goodbye

We loved this gossip show without apology. In a youth short on both information and entertainment, it taught us some free, fresh ideas about how to live.

Since Cai Kangyong announced the end on Weibo in October 2015, Kangxi has run one countdown special after another, bringing back the stars the show made famous. Its most popular regulars sat down together to talk about how their lives had changed over 12 years, and to retell the gossip the show had told again and again.

These three months felt like a long reunion over tea. And the show ended in a very Kangxi way. The Last Night of Kangxi Coming aired in two parts on January 13 and 14, 2016. As Cai Kangyong had promised, there were no guests: only Cai Kangyong, Little S and Chen Handian. A big bed was carried onto the set, granting Cai Kangyong's wish to host the show lying in bed with Little S.

Of course there were tears. The episode opened with a montage of every opening sequence the show had ever used. After that, they just chatted. Little S still told the audience everything, the happy things and the complaints. Even remembering all the male stars she had flirted with and groped on air brought her to tears. Cai Kangyong teased her: what a strange thing to cry about! The audience knew perfectly well that no one understands what makes Little S cry better than he does.

As it had been for 12 years, Little S provided the sparkle and Cai Kangyong set the tone and the pace. At 8 p.m. on the 13th, this "bookish man" posted an image on Weibo, as he usually does, bearing the words: "Because you are in this story too, I should say a proper goodbye to you!" So sly. It was exactly what we most wanted to hear.

And Little S? We searched her Weibo: she was still posting about her daughters and her food. Her only post about the show came on the 8th: "It's a pity, really, that Kangxi never got to interview the King of Yiqu from The Legend of Mi Yue!" It came with a bizarre selfie.

There will never be another show like this. For many young people on the mainland, Kangxi Coming meant something special.

From the 1980s and 1990s through the first decade of the 2000s, the mainland entertainment industry was getting started from almost nothing. People barely knew what entertainment was, and learned it from imports. Kangxi Coming was born at exactly that moment. It had a Taiwanese production team with years of experience, a perfect pair of hosts, the most mainstream taste, and kind, tolerant values, and it took the talk show as far as the format could go. Like Jay Chou, S.H.E and Meteor Garden, it is among the finest products of Taiwanese pop culture.

Rarer still, both the outspoken Little S and the gentle Cai Kangyong, who always made his views clear, showed us a way to live. They even helped young viewers sort out many things that parents and teachers had got wrong.

Cai Kangyong said it was time to stop the show, because it was no longer needed. He told producer Wang Weizhong that the episodes A-Ya hosted as a stand-in also drew high ratings. True, that is a reason. But there is another: for the audience, times really have changed. The sorry years when you needed Taiwanese variety shows to open your eyes and show you a more interesting life are over. Now that Kangxi Coming has ended, the people grieving are the longtime viewers who followed it all the way, not today's youngest crowd. For Brother Kangyong, who never stopped trying to get a message across, this may be the most fundamental reason of all.

Goodbye.

What follows is "Goodbye, Kangxi Coming," published in 2015. We wrote it to explain why so many people would miss this show. Now that the farewell is real, we are publishing it again.

The show's first rule: whether you were Ma Ying-jeou or Andy Lau, you had to "talk like a normal person"

Kangxi Coming premiered on Taiwan's CTi Variety channel on January 5, 2004, under the name Strange 10 O'Clock: Kangxi Coming, probably because the producers feared that the title Kangxi Coming on its own would baffle viewers.

It began as a celebrity interview show. With Cai Kangyong in the chair, it invited several heavyweight guests: Li Ao in the first episode, then Lien Chan, Ma Ying-jeou and Andy Lau. These episodes caught Taiwan's attention because they were racy enough, vulgar enough and fun enough to watch.

Little S sat on Li Ao's lap, and he took the chance to joke that his ex-wife Hu Yinmeng was constipated. Little S asked: "Looking at me, do you feel like you'd want something romantic with me?" Li Ao: "I would."

Lien Chan talked about underwear.

Little S: "Brother Chan, what kind of underwear do you usually wear at home?"

Lien Chan: "I wear the same underwear at home and when I go out."

Little S: "I know, is it boxers?"

Lien Chan: "BOXER ..."

Little S: "Are they a bit high-waisted?"

Lien Chan: "Pretty high."

Taiwan's Business Weekly summed up why Kangxi became a hit on the mainland. First came its free atmosphere, where "you dare to say anything, and nothing is strange": "getting Lien Chan to talk about family matters, letting Little S feel Jay Chou's muscles, listening to S.H.E talk about fun in the bedroom. No taboos."

In a popular phrase, this is "talking like a normal person." Whatever their field and however famous, once guests stepped into the force field of Little S and Cai Kangyong, they dropped the idol act or the serious act and talked about things ordinary people could relate to.

Many mainland viewers discovered the show gradually after 2005, and found it a breath of fresh air. Hunan TV already had Happy Camp, which was also hugely popular, but its style was completely different. He Jiong and Li Xiang were both peacemakers. Even when they wanted a laugh, they plotted it in private and stayed polite on camera. European and American variety shows had not yet caught on here. It was Kangxi Coming that made us realize: wow, so a conversation can go like this!

A gossip session for girlfriends and gay best friends, just as Little S sings: "Sisters' get-together is so happy"

The most-watched Kangxi Coming episode of 2015 was the "reconciliation of the century" between Little S and Huang Zijiao. Every viewer knew this couple's story as well as they might know the couple next door. Little S broke up with Huang Zijiao in 2000 and read her breakup letter on TV in tears. Now a mother, Little S faced the camera again and cried, this time in release. In front of our TVs we marveled: live long enough and you'll see everything.

Cai Kangyong said the Hsu sisters, Big S and Little S, are Taiwan's Truman Burbank: they have lived their lives on live TV since childhood. Little S treats the audience as her girlfriends and pours her heart out to them, so the audience treats her as family.

Kangxi Coming knew exactly who its audience was: women aged 16 to 40, as you would expect of a TV gossip show. The show was like a gossip session among sisters, with the aim Big S, Little S and Mavis Fan sang about: "Sisters' get-together is so happy." Little S is queen of the girlfriends, and Cai Kangyong is the scholarly gay best friend.

The show started with celebrity interviews. It ran so long that it had interviewed almost every star in Taiwan, so it switched to themed gossip talk. It invited all kinds of people, pretty and plain, famous and unknown, to talk about the most vulgar and trivial things. Its popular recurring segments, such as female stars taking off their makeup and the "Gender Survey Bureau," grew out of the same taste.

The "bookish man" and the "free spirit" make the perfect match, and oh, don't forget "special waiter" Handian

It began when Wang Weizhong, who admired Cai Kangyong as a "bookish man," invited him to host a TV show. Cai Kangyong said he liked Xu Xidi, better known as Little S: he holds back, she lets loose, so they would complement each other perfectly and should team up.

Cai Kangyong was born in 1962 into a "prominent family." His father owned the shipping company behind the steamship Taiping. He earned a master's degree in film in the United States. He writes books, and was editor-in-chief of the Taiwan edition of GQ. He is the only openly gay man in the Chinese-language entertainment world.

Little S is 16 years younger than Cai Kangyong. We all know her family story. She wanted to be a star from childhood: first singing, then selling clothes, then hosting, getting married and having children. Her favorite question for young heartthrobs is, "Can you tell I'm a mother of three?"

Over the show's 12 years, while Kangxi Coming was riding high, the spotlight usually fell on Little S. She pounced on Ma Ying-jeou, kissed Daniel Wu, and snipped off a tuft of Kris Phillips's chest hair. Wang Weizhong said that back then she was "a single girl with no inhibitions."

But watch enough episodes and you can see that Cai Kangyong was the backbone. He opens and closes every episode, and when he questions guests he controls the pace and the direction. He said: "If you watch Kangxi, you'll know I'm the one stirring things up. Little S stirs things up aggressively; I stir things up gently and politely. If you see through Kangxi, you'll know I'm the one in the background pushing Little S to do things, or making the guests feel hostile toward each other, so the audience gets the fun of watching a drama."

In fact, the mainland's Happy Camp produced a similar "dad and crazy girl" pair: He Jiong and Xie Na.

We like pairs like these not only because they look right together, but also because they are "soulmates" who each make the other better. That is what we mean when we say there's love in it.

Oh, and don't forget: in its later years Kangxi Coming also had a "special waiter," our classmate Chen Handian. He is the circus clown, a talented oddball. We love him too.

There is a kind of entertainer called "someone who's always on Kangxi"

For mainland viewers, there is a kind of entertainer called "someone who's always on Kangxi." Christian Hsia, who was invited onto Where Are We Going, Dad? 3. The lovable Teacher Qu. The fiery Sister Luo. Drama queen Cao Xiping. KID, who won over his dream girl. And the funniest of all, Zhao Zhengping and Shen Yulin.

It sounds strange: these people did nothing else, yet became famous just by chatting on Kangxi. In fact, because the hosts were real stars, we were willing to listen to them talk with unfamiliar guests. If a stranger was interesting enough, we quickly took to them.

What's more, like Little S, they all loved talking about their private lives. Each time they came on, they told their life stories all over again, offering up their own lives as material for gossip and laughs.

We just love gossip / empty calories / oddballs. But Brother Kangyong said it himself: this is a happy life, an open society

Wang Weizhong said: "Chinese society will always need a Kangxi spirit. There should always be a home full of laughter and fun, with nothing complicated in it, but with basic ethics, warm and unpretentious."

Many people ask: Taiwan has so many variety shows, plenty of them sharp-tongued and racy, so why did only Kangxi Coming become this big? As Wang Weizhong said, Kangxi really did have a "spirit." Beyond the entertainment, it had not only "basic ethics" but also something very clever.

Again, it comes down to the two hosts' temperaments. Little S shows all of herself, crazy enough and real enough. It is the same in Europe and America. Some critics say Little S in fact always puts her husband's family first, so how can she count as a "progressive woman"? But she set a progressive example mainly through how she behaved, not through her views on men and women. She not only encouraged sex; in some sense she also modeled being human, in those days. That is why everyone loved her so much. She is so special that even after she got caught up in "bread-gate," viewers, once their anger cooled, could not help forgiving her, as they would a sister in the family who had made a mistake.

Cai Kangyong is different. As a "man of culture," he has values that can influence people. He expresses himself like a gentleman, but watch long enough and you find that he is always gently getting his ideas across: freedom; mutual respect between people, with no meddling in each other's lives; equality between parents and children; tearing down authority; and so on.

He once praised Gao Xiaosong: "I think he is one of the rare people who don't use aggressive methods, but speak to the audience slowly and gently about the messages he wants to get across." The same could be said of Cai Kangyong himself.

Look at what Cai Kangyong says off the show and you will find that he knows better than anyone what Kangxi is doing.

On television, he said: "I hear some people look for depth on television, and I'm amazed. Television is convenient but shallow. Looking for depth on TV gives TV too much credit, and gives the history of civilization before TV too little. Why look for depth on TV? Why not read a book?"

On depth and shallowness, he said: "Ever since I was a child, the so-called deep people I knew have struck me as gloomy, and I didn't find that pleasant. I think life is half depth and half shallowness. You can't pretend that people are always in pursuit of depth and civilization. Strip away the pretense and most of the time people make the same choices animals do."

On oddballs and social progress, he said: "Many people consider me an oddball too, so I think the number of oddballs has nothing to do with the entertainers or the place. It depends on whether the whole society is open enough to let more oddballs dare to be themselves."

He even helped us understand Little S: "Part of it is that she isn't afraid of me. I know many people in show business are very afraid of me. From the very first episode, she was never afraid working with me. Only that way can you really bloom. When people do badly in front of me, it's often out of fear. Her natural courage and her carefree attitude toward life are things I don't have."

If Little S made the show sparkle, Cai Kangyong supplied its framework and its judgment of right and wrong. Because of him, we love the gossip show Kangxi Coming without apology. We love how it fools around and "talks like a normal person" while staying sincere and kind, and never cheap.

Goodbye Kangxi Coming, goodbye to Taiwan's reign over pop culture, goodbye to the barren youth of those born in the 1980s

Big S became famous before Little S, thanks to the 2001 idol drama Meteor Garden. A story about an ordinary girl and a rich, handsome boy looks like standard idol-drama fare today, but back then it was forbidden fruit. Middle-school girls stayed up late watching it on disc. Parents, meanwhile, signed petitions to boycott it, demanding that it stop promoting teenage romance!

That was the last and best time for Taiwanese pop culture. In the 2000s there were Taiwanese idol dramas, Jay Chou, S.H.E ... While mainland entertainment was getting started with Happy Camp, Super Girl and My Fair Princess, Taiwanese pop culture enjoyed one last stretch of exporting its culture from the top.

Even as he ran the last stretch of Kangxi, Cai Kangyong was also making U Can U BB for iQiyi.

After 2010, mainland variety shows boomed. Once the economy shifted, Taiwan, with a population of just over 20 million, could not compete with the scale of the mainland market. Kangxi Coming cost 100,000 yuan an episode to make, while shows such as The Voice of China and Keep Running cost tens of millions of yuan an episode. In one bit on U Can U BB, Matilda Tao said that when she went back to Taiwan she quoted the budget with a zero left off, "and it still caused an uproar in the Taiwanese industry." Taiwan's creativity is not what it was, either. Taiwan has started buying the rights to The Voice of China and Where Are We Going, Dad? Today, when we think of Taiwan, "Hong Kong and Taiwan stars" are a thing of the past; what remains is Taiwan's "small and fresh" indie style.

When Jay Chou married, people said: bride, please take good care of our youth. Now that Kangxi Coming is about to go off the air, people are talking about their youth again.

For many people born in the 1980s, whose youth was poor in entertainment and information, Kangxi Coming, a variety show about everyday life, meant something special. Through the long middle-school years there were no phones and no computers, parents wouldn't tell you about sex, and after class you went straight to evening study hall. When they started watching Kangxi Coming over dinner and saw all sorts of fresh, free things, they gained from Little S and Cai Kangyong some knowledge, and you could say some enlightenment.

That is not a job a variety show needed to do, or should have had to do. But at that time and in that place, it did. As Wang Weizhong said: the times make the heroes.

That's how it was. It is time to say goodbye. A little sad, but no regrets.