Back in those days, singing and variety shows were at their prime. In a phone interview with 8days.sg,  Xiang Yun shared that shows like the popular Bin Fen 83 aired almost every night then.

The 57-year-old also revealed that she had trained in singing alongside most of SBC’s singers, under the careful guidance of famed singer Pan Xiu Qiong.

“We trained together every day. Later, when the drama team became busier, I returned to acting, but Wenyong and I both did variety shows too. During that era, we hosted variety shows and intermingled a lot with the singers as a result. I was very close to Feng Qin Yan and Bei Xin Ni ‘cos during that time, it was just the three of us. [I was close to] Peter Chua, and Wu Jia Ming, as well, but they joined us a little later,” she said. 

 While they aren’t in contact much these days, Xiang Yun revealed that when she hosted the previous season of Silver Carnival, the guests were mostly local singers who’d appeared on television in the ‘80s. 

“I managed to meet up with most of them during those recordings,” she said. However, the format of the current season of Silver Carnival underwent a slight tweak, with different guests this time round.

“Therefore when the idea of having a gathering popped up, we decided to make use of this chance to meet up. After all, I’m old already, so whatever that I want to do, I’ll definitely do it,” she laughed.

“This is really nostalgic for me, during that era, there were really a lot of singing shows and the like, it was so popular with the viewers! I believe that a lot of the viewers really miss these shows too. It’s really too bad that we couldn’t take pictures to remember those times. Now, ‘cos of technology, we can just use our phones to snap pictures whenever we want, but we couldn’t do so back then,” Xiang Yun said.

“I think the most unforgettable show for me was when I hosted Jiu Yun Xin Sheng", Xiang Yun adds. 

“The singers mostly performed songs from the 1930s to 1960s on the show. It was all very old songs, and we had to memorise quite a bit of it. For me, I just had to remember the titles, while the singers had to sing these songs [and memorise the lyrics]. Back then, we were all so young, and I found it very amazing that they could remember those difficult words. For me, even after so many years, if you were to ask me to memorise the lyrics of a song from that era, I can't do it. But the singers could do so, and they even memorised multiple songs per week. It was really very different back then — you had to be very skilled in order to [be an artiste],” she said.

Photos: Xiang Yun/Instagram, Xiang Yun/Facebook, thepastarchive/Instagram, Hu Ge Sheng/YouTube, Blue Global/YouTube, Agus Saroso/YouTube