"In real life, I could never be like the girl I played in the film," said Shu Qi (
"If I were Vicky, I would have squashed the guy and left long ago. And I would never have come back to the relationship," said the willful Shu.
PHOTO: AFP
Vicky's boyfriend Hao-hao (
As one of the most prolific and most expensive actresses in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Shu said she would jump at the chance to work again with Hou, regardless of the payment and the time needed for shooting. "This is the most challenging experience I've ever had and I've learnt a great deal from him," said the 25-year-old.
Wearing a slim, gray-colored Chinese dress, Shu charmed onlookers at Manray Beach in Cannes.
"At first it was hard for me to play this role because I don't identify with Vicky and her suffering in a relationship and the environment of drugs and hostess bars," Shu said.
To prepare for the role, Shu did extensive field work in dingy hostess bars with Hou and the film's crew. "Hou was very good at making me get used to the role." After a month of hanging out in bars and clubs, "I felt like Vicky had entered my body," she said.
"I cried for two hours before shooting one of the scenes. And I began to hate Tuan even off the set. I almost threw things at him in one scene because I was so furious," she said.
This is Shu's second trip to Cannes, the first being for Vivian Chang's (
During the Metal Ages, prior to the arrival of the Dutch and Chinese, a great shift took place in indigenous material culture. Glass and agate beads, introduced after 400BC, completely replaced Taiwanese nephrite (jade) as the ornamental materials of choice, anthropologist Liu Jiun-Yu (劉俊昱) of the University of Washington wrote in a 2023 article. He added of the island’s modern indigenous peoples: “They are the descendants of prehistoric Formosans but have no nephrite-using cultures.” Moderns squint at that dynamic era of trade and cultural change through the mutually supporting lenses of later settler-colonialism and imperial power, which treated the indigenous as
By 1971, heroin and opium use among US troops fighting in Vietnam had reached epidemic proportions, with 42 percent of American servicemen saying they’d tried opioids at least once and around 20 percent claiming some level of addiction, according to the US Department of Defense. Though heroin use by US troops has been little discussed in the context of Taiwan, these and other drugs — produced in part by rogue Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies then in Thailand and Myanmar — also spread to US military bases on the island, where soldiers were often stoned or high. American military policeman
An attempt to promote friendship between Japan and countries in Africa has transformed into a xenophobic row about migration after inaccurate media reports suggested the scheme would lead to a “flood of immigrants.” The controversy erupted after the Japan International Cooperation Agency, or JICA, said this month it had designated four Japanese cities as “Africa hometowns” for partner countries in Africa: Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania. The program, announced at the end of an international conference on African development in Yokohama, will involve personnel exchanges and events to foster closer ties between the four regional Japanese cities — Imabari, Kisarazu, Sanjo and
A town in Japan is to urge all residents to restrict their smartphone use to two hours a day in an attempt to tackle online addiction and sleep deprivation. Officials in Toyoake, Aichi prefecture, said the measure would target not only children but also adults, amid growing concern about the physical and psychological toll excessive smartphone use is taking on people of all ages. The move aims “to prevent excessive use of devices causing physical and mental health issues … including sleep problems,” the mayor, Masafumi Koki said recently. The Toyoake municipal assembly began debating the non-binding ordinance this week ahead of a