The unrelenting character assassination of Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) by the Hong Kong media seems to have rubbed off on the kids who should be her fans. On Monday night she and Andy Lau (劉德華) held a press conference to publicize the new movie Big Guy (
Not long ago, Cecilia was the media's sweetheart. So what brought about this spectacular fall from grace? Pop Stop recently reported that Hong Kong paparazzi had snapped shots of her with a voodoo doll, which was presumed to represent her ex Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒). She's also been spotted dressed in bombastic clothes and made a big splash at a concert in China two weeks ago where she provocatively spread her legs in a choreographed routine not unlike Madonna's fabled Like a Virgin performance at the MTV Music Awards.
Given the chauvinistic standards of the gossip rags, her supposedly unseemly behavior has been attributed to her breakup. But the only truly odd behavior on her part, as far as Pop Stop can discern, was her retraction this week of an earlier announcement that she had a foreigner boyfriend, which was reported in Hong Kong's edition of the Apple Daily (蘋果日報) and in The Great Daily News (大成報) as yet another case of her having gone off the rails. It was all a joke, she said. Ha ha.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Gigi Leung (梁詠琪) was reported in the current edition of Next Magazine (壹週刊) as having turned down a part in the next Johnny To (杜琪峰) film after the director had openly criticized her lackluster performance in Turn Left, Turn Right (向左走向右走), which he directed.
No matter how poorly He Li-hsiu (河莉秀) acts, the sultry South Korean starlet, whose main gimmick is that she started her life as a boy [and had a sex change], always overshadows the other actresses. Her limelight snatching rubbed actress Wu Pei-tsi (吳佩慈) up so badly this week that at a press conference about the show they both star in called Honey (親愛的), Wu lashed out complaining that she was, in fact, the star. "Why are her photos always so pretty [on the promotional posters] and the other actors' just ones taken at rehearsal?" Wu said. She even snapped at He's tendency to wear revealing blouses and dresses. "Ai ya, her chest can be made as big as she wants it to be."
This weekend's major pop event will be Lee Hom Wang's (
PHOTO: MAX WOODWORTH, TAIPEI TIMES
Tonight in front of the Presidential Office Shunza (順子) is billed to take the stage as part of the Double Ten Day celebrations. The selection of singers for any event related to celebrating Taiwan has been sensitive ever since A-mei (阿妹) was barred for a year from performances and product endorsements in China after she sang the national anthem at President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) inauguration in 2000. But Shunza was quoted in local papers as saying she's "not scared at all" of any repercussions from across the strait. Easy for her to say, she has an American passport.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In the aftermath of the 2020 general elections the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had crushed them in a second landslide in a row, with their presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) winning more votes than any in Taiwan’s history. The KMT did pick up three legislative seats, but the DPP retained an outright majority. To take responsibility for that catastrophic loss, as is customary, party chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) resigned. This would mark the end of an era of how the party operated and the beginning of a new effort at reform, first under