Once again, for its cover last week Next Magazine snapped some saucy pictures of two popular and beautiful young actors rounding first base in a car with insufficiently tinted windows. Nothing too scandalous there, except the guy involved, Xu Shaoyang (許紹洋) wasn't the boyfriend of the girl he was taking for a ride, Lin Weijun (林韋君). Her actual boyfriend, at least until the magazine rolled off the press, was the pop singer Lin Youwei (林佑威). With obvious shadenfreude, the magazine busted Weijun doing what it called "the splits between two beds," a term it coined a while ago for just such occasions.
Since the incriminating July 24 issue came out, the gossip news over the past week has been dominated by the tearful saga of the two Lin's public breakup. Press conferences were held, in Youwei's case to angrily announce the couple's breakup, henceforth, and in Weijun's to squeeze out a few tears for the cameras and express her remorse. A weird twist to the story came when Weijun thanked Shaoyang for being a "real man" -- for admitting to the affair from the first day it was exposed, while her agent tacked on a nasty rebuke to Youwei's outrage by calling him a "chauvinist" for blowing up over the issue and "not wanting to communicate" with Weijun. Youwei may feel comforted to know that sympathy from his die-hard fans helped propel his new album to Tower Records' number four spot.
All the fireworks sparked by the Lin-Lin-Xu love triangle story provided some timely cover for the other potential scandal of the week also broken by Next involving TV show presenter Momoko Tao (
Jolin Tsai (
Also hanging onto celebrity status by her painted nail extensions is A-mei (阿妹), who, no longer content to be the cute girl next door, has recast herself as an unharnessed vixen for her latest album Courage (勇敢). In an exclusive event, Hinet customers will be able to enjoy A-mei gyrating in mesh tops and hot pants in a special live web-cast set for 8pm on Aug. 8. Now that's killer content! No, but for real, it's a concert just like Madonna's online concert at Brixton Academy. And A-mei really knows how to rock a live show, so it should be pretty good viewing if the notoriously lumbering Hinet can work out the technical kinks. Check http://www.hinet.net/Amei for information.
On the other side of the strait, China's gossip rags and our local edition of the Minsheng Daily speculated on a budding romance between actress/singer Zhao Wei (
In another display of Chinese xenophobia, Chinese papers reporting on the visit by Real Madrid to Kunming heaped adulation on David Beckham while derisively calling Ronaldo fat and lecherous (好色). The invective came after China's Sports World Weekly (體壇周報) reported that Ronaldo and teammate Figo chased a group of waitresses trying to get them to engage in a samba dance. The gist of the article was that it's not enough for Ronaldo to rock China's national team in the 2002 World Cup, but he even has the gall to come to China and try to rock their women too! Viva Brasilia!
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless