Japanese pop idol Amuro Namie got a taste of the overbearing side of Taiwanese hospitality last week at CKS International Airport when her minders began beating back zealous reporters and fans blocking her path to the immigration counter. It's become a ritual for the local entertainment media -- as well as sometimes hundreds of fans -- to meet and send off foreign stars at the airport in what normally seems like a high-spirited circus. But in Amuro's case, her bodyguards seem to have accidentally pushed the starlet head first into a large window pane during the fracas with the paparazzi. The result was that the last photos taken were of a frightened and crying Amuro rushing to catch her plane -- and probably vowing never to come back.
Meanwhile Taiwanese singer Zhang Shan-wei (張善為) will have to think twice about going back to China, where some of his erstwhile fans have put a price on his head in response to unflattering remarks he made about life over there. According to the current edition of Next Magazine (壹週刊), some of Zhang's fans in China got their hands on a videotape of a show he hosted recently on CTV in which he said that living standards in China are low and that people aren't sophisticated. Incensed by these comments, the fans have since been bombarding the singer with invective on the show's Internet bulletin board and warning him not to come back to China.
The Internet was the site of another nasty swipe at pop stars this week, when, according to Apple Daily (蘋果日報), the boy band 5566 ranked at the top of a poll conducted on Taipei Changchun Elementary's Web site that queried which pop star(s) most needed to get run over by a car. The school later disassociated itself from the poll and erased it from the site.
Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒) must be wondering where to go next after the release of Jade Goddess of Mercy (玉觀音), which, on its opening night earned a pathetic box office grand total of HK$7,000, which adds up to about 100 viewers in the supposedly movie-mad city. That kind of result can't feel good, especially as it comes in the wake of a rejected appeal Tse made to the courts in Hong Kong that had earlier convicted him of perverting the course of justice by trying to get his bodyguard to take the blame for crashing his Ferrari.
In happier news, actress Lee Chien-rong (李篟蓉) gave birth to a healthy baby boy last Saturday.
With the Golden Melody Awards a mere two weeks away, details of the ceremony's preparations are gradually being leaked to the press. It's already been confirmed that actress Shu Qi (舒淇), who incidentally turned 28 last Friday, will be on hand as a hostess and that Takeshi Kaneshiro is still contemplating an offer to do the same. Other stars who've signed on to take part in the proceedings are Karen Mok (莫文蔚) and Eason Chan (陳奕迅), who will sing two duets of Anita Mui (梅艷芳) songs in a section of the show that will commemorate the Hong Kong singer who died last year.
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