Pop Stop

Jackie Chan has far and away the highest personal worth among Chinese stars. PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES

Poor old KMT presidential hopeful Lien Chan (連戰) is frequently singled out for ridicule by TV pundits as a wooden old man. So in an apparent attempt to counter that uninspiring impression widely held among young people, Lien's campaign staff thought it would be a good idea to get him, his wife and son on Tsai Kang-yong (蔡康永) and Little S' (小S) talk show Here's Kangxi (康熙來了) for some intimate face time last week. Showing their true colors (blue, for the pan-blue ticket), the hosts made sure the interview was a walk in the park for the guests, except when Little S asked Lien what kind of underwear he wears, scoring some cheap laughs that served to highlight how socially awkward, in fact, Lien is.

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 (大成報). Sexual double entendre as a campaign gimmick? Hey, why not?

Little S, left, and Tsai Kang-yong shown here with local media hound Ke Si-hai in the background, hosted Lien Chan last week. PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES

The DPP has also jumped on the Infernal Affairs (無間道) bandwagon, with three humorous videos appropriating the movie's dramatic opening and music on the pro-A-bian (阿扁) iparty.org.tw Web site. Go to the AV room of the site to download. The clips include some fairly incriminating archival news footage with Lien and his running mate James Soong (宋楚瑜) saying the nastiest things about each other back in 2000 when they ran on opposing tickets. There's also the by-now classic Lien-Soong animation rap show that made the rounds of mass e-mails a few months ago.

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 (成龍) stands heads above his peers at number one with a net value of 500 million yuan (US$60.4 million), followed by Chow Yun Fat (周潤發) at 150 million yuan, Andy Lau (劉德華) at 140 million yuan , Jet Li (李連杰) at 110 million yuan and Tony Leung (梁朝偉) at 80 million yuan.

On the women's side, Zhang Ziyi (張子怡) tops the list valued at 120 million yuan, followed by Maggie Cheung (張曼玉) at 110 million yuan, Gong Li (鞏俐) at 90 million yuan, Carina Lau (劉嘉玲) at 85 million yuan and Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) at 75 million yuan.