This week, after three wildly successful years in the business, Sun Yanzi (
The Singaporean-born, Taiwan-based singer released six albums in the three years since she burst onto the scene seemingly from out of nowhere. Last week she released her seventh record, called The Moment, which is a compilation with five new tracks and made her farewell concert at last week's MTV show in Taipei.
In the Liberty Times Yanzi has written a farewell journal-style series addressed to her fans in which she says her main reasons for stepping out of the business for a period of time are personal. That's really not surprising at all, considering she's released an album at a rate of one every six months and has been tirelessly jetting around the region for concerts and endorsements.
In her own words, she says "there have been many things" she hasn't been able to savor, and many bad things she hasn't "been able to fully digest."
Fair enough. It's not every star that makes a graceful exit from the business, although Yanzi insists she'll be back.
A going away gift for Yanzi would be her nomination for best female singer in the International Chinese Music Charts (
Curiously, Karen Mok (
On the men's side, the category is crowded with big names like Andy Lau (
If album sales are a factor in determining who wins, then the smart money will be on Jay Chou, whose newest album moved 80,000 copies in two weeks in Taiwan, which is a lot these days.
One band that isn't on the nomination list for any award is F4, that discardable flash-in-the-pan boy band of last summer. Not that the members care. They've mostly made smooth segues into TV. Last week, Tsai Tsai (
Audiences also got to see a lot more of TV host Chang Fei (
As spellbinding as Chang Fei going nude sounds, most people will probably be more eager to see the match-up of Chang Chen (
About a month ago, Pop Stop reported on the sad romantic fate of Lin You-wei (
Well, shed no more tears, because Lin has rebounded nicely by having a date with Little S (
To that, Little S turned and asked Lin if he had a big bed. He didn't answer then, but maybe now she knows.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would