Twenty years of radio partners who cannot stop bickering

The local station's evening programme, Night Breeze Express, has had the same two hosts for twenty years: Lao Xu and A Ping.

The show started as a song-request hour and is now an hour of other people's family troubles. The audience has turned over generation after generation. The bickering has not changed at all. Lao Xu is slow and deliberate and likes to quote the classics. A Ping talks fast and exists mainly to take him down. "Lao Xu, you're showing off again." "A Ping, will you let me finish a sentence." At least ten exchanges like that every night. A listener wrote in: "Listening to you two argue is more relaxing than the actual content."

But the partnership began with two people who could not stand each other.

In 2004 the programme was reformatted and the station merged two solo hosts into a double act. In their first recording together, Lao Xu thought A Ping's pacing was too aggressive, and A Ping thought Lao Xu rambled. They cut three minutes of tape and blocked each other for a week. The station manager called them in and left them with one sentence: "You save the show yourselves. If you can't, you're both out."

Saving the show turned out to be the process of learning each other. To line up scripts they met in the station's reference room and talked until late. Lao Xu discovered that A Ping's aggression had measure in it — she had spent three years on the late-night hotline and knew that people who call at midnight dread being taken the long way round. A Ping discovered that Lao Xu's rambling was not showing off. Every allusion was a lullaby prepared for someone lying awake. At the second recording they each gave up half a step: Lao Xu's quotations were capped at thirty seconds, A Ping's replies left a gap to breathe in. The phone lines jammed that night.

After that they became each other's calibrator. A Ping is impatient and tends to take the conversation away from a caller who is pouring their heart out; one look from Lao Xu and she brakes. Lao Xu sometimes over-quotes; one "talk like a human being" from A Ping and he can turn A New Account of Tales of the World into plain speech on the spot. The station's management summed them up: "It isn't that they have no friction. They made friction part of the craft."

The highest form of partnership is not the absence of conflict. It is turning conflict into part of the trade. You pull my leg, I catch you — twenty years of timing, built one exchange at a time.

Twenty years in, there was nearly a break-up. Two years ago the station was restructured and the show was on the chopping block. Lao Xu was moved to an administrative post and A Ping was told she could go into digital. On the day Lao Xu packed up his desk, A Ping said something on air without naming anyone: "Twenty years of doing this show, I know what a partner is. A partner is this: if he goes, I don't record. If they transfer him out, what you're cutting isn't a programme. It's me." The younger staff passed the clip around the building. In the end the show stayed, and so did Lao Xu — someone found the original clause in the contract specifying two hosts.

Last year was the twentieth anniversary. The old listeners organised their own "Golden Microphone" vote and put the two names in a tie. Nobody could separate them. At the ceremony Lao Xu's acceptance speech was one line: "Thank you to my partner. She has made going to work feel like going home for twenty years." A Ping grabbed the microphone: "Is that supposed to be a compliment? Fine. For twenty years' sake, I'll take it."

The red light comes on in the studio and the new episode begins. Lao Xu clears his throat. "Good evening, listeners—" A Ping cuts in: "It's time for us to argue again."