Pop sensations Mayday (五月天) were edging closer this week to breaking the record for the most attended concert at Taipei Municipal Stadium, having already sold 35,000 tickets by the end of last week. The current record of 40,000 was set by the king of pop himself Michael Jackson and hasn't been approached in years. Given the frantic hype surrounding tomorrow's much anticipated concert, Mayday looks as though they're well on their way to shattering the record. Helping them out in the process will be their label Rock Records, which has chartered busses to bring in fans from down south. For information on how to catch the bus, call (02) 2651-8168.
Preparations for the show have become increasingly extravagant in recent days, as the stage was expanded, the band's two guitarists blew NT$200,000 online to buy six new guitars specially for the show and Rock Records acquired a Swan Lake ballet tutu which drummer Yan Ming (
Yan's tutu gag probably won't go over as well as Korean transvestite He Li-hsiu's (
Another lady with luscious lips and an apparently big mouth is Taiwanese transplant to Hong Kong Shu Qi (舒淇). Last week the starlet revealed the name of a mystery shampoo company for whom she had made advertisements before the ads were released, causing a furor with the ad agency and throwing a spanner in the works of the ad campaign, as well as putting into question any future deals between the actress and the company.
On a campaign of a different sort, but also geared toward securing more money for stars, Sun Yanzi (孫燕姿) has encoded her newest album The Moment with anti-pirating technology to prevent her music from making it onto the Internet as mp3 files. Following Madonna's example, Yanzi is also offering to sell B sides that didn't make it onto the album over the Net in advance of the album's release, which is set for next Friday.
That's about the same day that pint-sized rapper Maji (麻吉) should be heading back to the US to start the school year, if his father can pack him onto the plane, that is. It became know this week that young Maji is not the stellar student his father wishes he were, having gotten a D, a C, two Bs and only two As last semester. But after making a pretty strong run at becoming Taiwan's foremost hip-hop luminary, with a performance at the Golden Melody Awards two weeks ago, he has since been quoted refusing to return to the States (while stomping his feet and flailing his arms). He even somehow misplaced his passport -- accidentally, of course.
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
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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s