Last month, after the final episode of hit basketball reality show Dunk of China aired, I was mildly depressed: after a summer where iQIYI’s Rap of China season 2 was my preferred form of procrastination, Dunk of China quickly filled the void left when it first began airing on Youku, often dubbed China’s answer to Youtube.

Moreover, snippets of every episode were incessantly replayed in the Beijing subway, unsurprising given the unanimous praise the show received for bringing “straight men aesthetics” (直男审美 zhí nán shěnměi) into a reality TV industry that institutions like Party media agency Xinhua deemed to be polluted by so-called “girly men” (娘炮 niáng pào). Nevertheless, the number of suspenseful shots per minute in Dunk of China is so high that my morning grogginess was often alleviated by watching this fusion between a variety show and a 3×3 basketball match.