When Faye Wong (
Sales figures in Taiwan are unreliable because it's an open secret that labels lie through their teeth about album sales, but Next Magazine (
Nothing seems to be going quite right for Faye, who arrived in Taipei from Hong Kong on Monday for a nine-day promotional tour. The highlight of her trip, which will take her to Taichung and Kaohsiung, was intended to be a meet-and-greet the fans session at the glitzy new Taipei 101 mall, but the bumbling managers of the shopping center somehow added a zero when telling Faye's agents the number of people the space could safely hold. So, Faye's managers who had planned for 2,000 fans were belatedly informed that the space could accommodate only 200. The mix-up forced Faye to switch venues for the event to the far-less glamorous Nankang 101 for this Saturday.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Things also seem to be going from bad to worse for Momoko Tao(
TV show host and author Mickey Huang (
The pop event of the weekend, sure to be attended by every name in Mando-pop, will be David Tao's (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
With listicles of local attractions including Costco and numerous children’s playgrounds, I was not expecting much. Opened on Jan. 31, the Taipei MRT’s Circular Line, or Yellow Line, made life in the nation’s capital even more convenient. But judging from Internet search results, it hasn’t opened up many new tourism opportunities, unsurprising as the route mostly crosses densely populated areas and industrial parks. Places like a sports stadium with rainbow colored bleachers perfect for Instagram selfies wouldn’t do it for me either, and it’s pointless to list attractions at the connecting stops that have existed for years. As a history nerd, there
June 1 to June 7 In February 1988, Robert Wu (吳清友) set aside NT$17.5 million to purchase two Henry Moore sculptures from London’s Marlborough Gallery. He never bought the pieces. Feeling slighted that the gallery manager initially looked down on him as a Taiwanese, he decided that night to use the money to open his own art space back home. “Without selling any art, that money could support the gallery for four years. If I feature one artist per month, that provides a stage for at least 100 artists,” Wu said in the book Eslite Time (誠品時光) by Lin Ching-yi (林靜宜).
Captain Wynn Gale — a fifth-generation Georgia shrimper — is on the side of the road on an April morning, selling shrimp at the same street corner where his dad sold shrimp. “How’s the pandemic treating you?” I ask. “Sales have dropped off by about two-thirds. No out-of-towners coming through on the I-95. No local traffic.” He sighs. “I’m going to tough it out. I can survive with what I’m selling. But that’s all I’m doing. Most shrimpers don’t have 401k retirement plans, you know?” Gale would rather be out on his boat, a 1953 trawler he had for nine years but recently
The Lunar New Year vacation had just ended when Alice Wu began to worry about COVID-19. Not long after, on Feb. 10, Wu — who didn’t give her Chinese name to speak freely for this story — received the first of several coronavirus-related sales messages through her smartphone. The pitch came from an acquaintance who represents Amway, an American multi-level marketing (MLM) company that’s been active in Taiwan since 1982. “I’ve only met her once, and I’ve never bought from her. If her sister wasn’t one of my daughter’s teachers, I’d probably block her,” says Wu, who lives in Taichung. MLM, sometimes
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