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    NEWS

    Saucy Cooking Show Gets the Chop

    Web series ‘S-Style Show,’ hosted by flirtatious singer ‘Little S,’ taken offline.

    An online cooking show hosted by Taiwanese singer Xu Xidi — more commonly known as “Little S” — has disappeared from the web.

    “S-Style Show,” whose Chinese title translates to “Sister Is So Hungry,” was launched in August 2016 on Netflix-like video platform iQIYI. In each of the 12 episodes, Little S invites male guests to cook with her. However, it soon becomes clear that culinary skills are hardly the focus of the show, with audiences being drawn more to how Little S interacts with her handsome sidekicks, hugging and flirting with them as they prepare their dishes.

    In one episode, Little S and actor Gao Yunxiang re-enacted an emotional scene, with S running her fingers from his face to his stomach and even jumping into his arms. In another episode, the Hong Kong singer and actor Chen Weiting and Little S seemed to hit it off well together, flirting throughout the show and at one point nearly kissing, to the audience’s audible excitement.

    In the show’s trailer, Little S, wearing a tight black dress, is tied to a chair as a man with a whip interrogates her. “Why do you like flirting with men?” he asks. “I touch their bodies for the ratings,” she answers. “Only if I have an audience will I have work.”

    Viewership numbers for the show are no longer available, but Little S’s approach seems indeed to have won her a large audience. On microblog platform Weibo, hashtagged posts about “S-Style Show” had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times as of Wednesday, and the show’s official account has nearly 130,000 followers.

    As is often the case when Chinese TV shows are taken offline, the reason for the abrupt removal, as well as the entity behind it, are unknown. Only in some cases are more details forthcoming, as when popular vlogger Papi Jiang was ordered by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television to remove vulgar language from her videos.

    Sun Lixia, a spokesperson for iQIYI, told Sixth Tone that the program was taken offline temporarily “due to adjustments being carried out to its content,” and declined to answer any further questions.

    Commentators online have speculated that authorities ordered the show be removed because they thought Little S’s flirting was in bad taste. Some net users have agreed that the show was of questionable quality. “I felt embarrassed while watching three episodes,” one Weibo user wrote. “The content is meaningless and vulgar, and not funny at all.”

    “S-Style Show” is the latest in a string of TV shows to have been taken offline in the last year. In July, “Roast Convention,” a show on which comedians made jokes about each other, was removed after its first episode had been online for just three days. Then two seasons of iQIYI’s bad-boy cop drama “Yu Zuidisappeared in October. That same month popular dispute resolution show “Agony Uncles” failed to broadcast during it’s usual timeslot after two particularly controversial episodes.

    (Header image: A still frame from ‘S-Style Show’ shows host ‘Little S’ hugging guest Wu Qilong. From the show’s official Weibo account)