Last week, after much pre-arrival hype on the part of Universal Taiwan, French pop star Alizee hit the tarmac at CKS International Airport and within minutes was chased by Taiwan's notorious TV and newspaper camera crews into the women's toilets, where she hid for almost half an hour. When she finally emerged from the facilities covering her face under her clothes, she attempted to rush through immigration, but didn't get far before she was yelled at to get to the back of the line. A number of newspapers the following day cast the ugly episode as yet another case of a foreign star not paying proper respect to Taiwan's media. The Liberty Times (
impression."
TAIPEI TIMES FILE PHOTO
As it turns out, the French starlet had a case of "le poo-poo" and was forced to cancel all her appearances on TV shows, all interviews and autograph sessions and leave Taiwan in under 24 hours to recuperate back in France. Before landing in Taiwan, Alizee was doing a promotional sweep through South Korea, where she allegedly picked up a bug that triggered a violent purging of her system. Having rooted out the culprit, The Great Entertainment Daily (
TAIPEI TIMES FILE PHOTO
Alizee wasn't the only French person to get under people's skin last week. The Apple Daily (
Speaking of groping, last week Pop Stop reported on the recent phenomenon of Ken Chu (
On a more wholesome note, Vivian Hsu (
A marriage set for next year, according to Next Magazine's (
Apple Daily's (
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