Poor old KMT presidential hopeful Lien Chan (
The DPP also proved itself prone to being lampooned over the past week with its latest series of newspaper and billboard advertisements that are trying to boost the vote rate for the referendum set to take place at the same time as the presidential election. Pop Stop was waiting for the MRT and noticed people giggling and pointing at a DPP billboard, which features an attractive model of about 30 dressed in a school uniform that makes her look suspiciously like someone out of a Japanese fetish magazine with a slogan that reads: "My first time. The whole world is watching." The same ad ran as a full front-page on Sunday's The Great Daily News
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
The DPP has also jumped on the Infernal Affairs
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
And in non-political news, two weeks ago, Pop Stop reported that Taiwan's boy band 5566 had ripped off the cover of Japanese band SMAP album for their own album. This week, Next Magazine (壹週刊) has uncovered yet another case of blatant cover-art copying, this time by the boy band R&B. The picture in question shows the five boys showering together at a sauna and is almost a photocopy of a photo used by Japanese boy band V6 for their own photo collection. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, though. When planning Mando-pop albums, it's standard practice for producers to hand songwriters Western pop music CDs and essentially tell them to copy certain songs for local singers. It seems logical that this practice would spill over into the cover art.
Chinese business news Web site icxo.com and the World Human Resources Laboratory released a list last week of the top stars in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, according to personal worth. Among the men, Jackie Chan
On the women's side, Zhang Ziyi
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50