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Left to right, Lee Hom Wong, David Tao, Elva Hsiao and Eason Chan put on a great show at the Hope of Love Concert last Saturday. PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES

There was plenty of love and a bit of heartbreak in the air last Saturday (Valentine's Day). So, starting off with the love.

David Tao, Lee Hom Wong (王力宏), Eason Chan (陳奕迅) and Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒) set the Panchiao Sports Arena ablaze last Saturday night at their Hope of Love Concert, attended by some 35,000 screaming, glowstick-waving fans, according to the Liberty Times (自由時報). Pop Stop was on the scene and has to admit to being shocked and awed by the over-the-top pyrotechnics, lights and sound spectacle. But the crowd in the seating sections directly in front of the stage, as is often the case at Mando-pop concerts, took about three hours of de-thawing before they finally stayed on their feet for more than two minutes at a time.

Elva kicked things off with four impressive, choreography-heavy numbers twirling on five-inch heels in a can-can dress, which later was removed in favor of a pair of hot pants practically as wide as a strand of dental floss. It took two songs for her to finally start singing in key, but with outfits like hers, no one seemed to notice. Eason followed up with a short set of superbly sung hits, including K Song King (歌之王) and Your Backpack (你的背包). The only distracting element in his performance, aside from his bright yellow cowboy hat, was the unmistakable yellow-on-black silhouette of a couple knockin' boots doggystyle on his T-shirt. Maybe it was to mark Valentine's Day.

Lee Hom, looking like P. Diddy in a full white suit, ran through his set, showing off his musical prowess on piano, violin and guitar, finally reaching his finale of One and Only (唯一), which was OK, but he withheld the highest and most dramatic notes of the song. Everyone else in the stadium seemed to think that was fine, but Pop Stop was hoping for the full-force chorus. David came through with an energetic set starting with Rain (找自己) that finally got people on their feet and proved why he was the headline act. The musical props for the night, however, have to go to Jamie, the Michael Bolton lookalike session guitarist who shredded all the solos.

According to this week's Next Magazine (壹週刊), Alex, the boy who puts the A in the boy band BAD, was present at the Hope of Love Concert to show his support and supposedly his love to Elva. The magazine cited the pair wearing identical love bracelets as proof of a liaison, but as is so often the case with star couples, they're still deep in the closet if anything saucy is actually brewing.

The magazine also reported on a second budding romance between Wilbur Pan (潘瑋伯), who has reportedly been putting out all the stops recently to try to win the affection of Little S (小), who was left single six months ago.

In the heartbreak arena, the relationship between Hong Kong singers Sammi Cheng (鄭秀文) and Andy Hui (許志安) has reached an emphatic end. The couple had been together for 13 years, but toward the end Hsu was quoted in Hong Kong papers as saying that Sammi "wasn't a good lover." Sammi has apparently taken the hit quite hard and failed to appear last week at promotional appearances in Taiwan for her new movie Magic Kitchen (魔幻廚房).

Shed a tear for Junior of the boy band Cosmos as well, because he divulged to The Great Daily News (大成報) last week that an erstwhile girlfriend had once broken up with him the day before Valentine's Day and when he called her the next day, hoping to at least spend a nice evening together, a guy answered her phone. He told the paper that at that moment he was standing on a pier in Keelung and was tempted to make the big leap.

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