Perhaps it's because of the alleged financial crisis facing Rock Records, but according to media reports last week artists from the label have had the urge recently to add even more cheese topping than usual to attract press attention and sell their records.
Rocker Chang Chen-yue's (張震嶽) latest album The Story of Ah-yue (阿嶽正傳) is a collection of bad-taste, blue jokes. The first single is Useless Man (無路用的人) and on a radio show to promote his CD, Chang explained that a useless man means sexually impotent. He was later photographed with two sausages: in one hand was a 7-11 hotdog, in the other a giant Taiwanese sausage from Shihlin night market. "This is a comparison between Western men and Chinese men. Who's useless? Now you know!"
There was more patriotism on the mainland where people never tire, it seems, about protesting against foreigners and praising homegrown talent. Zhang Yi-mou's (張藝謀) film House of Flying Daggers (十面埋伏) is lambasted by Internet users because it has an English song as the theme tune. According to the critics, the song Lovers by opera diva Kathleen Battle (who sings the Athens Olympics anthem) is "too weird," "pathetic" and "inappropriate" for a Chinese martial arts movie. According to The Great Daily News (大成報), the critics complained that since the story takes place in the Tang Dynasty, the film should have used Tang music to express the beauty of Tang culture. House of Flying Daggers, starring heart throb Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武), Zhang Zi-yi (章子怡) and Andy Lau (劉德華) is scheduled to premiere in Beijing on July 10. Apparently, protests about the English theme song have caused the production company to look for a Chinese song.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
After breaking up with Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒), Faye Wong's (王菲) new man is, apparently, Chinese actor Lee Ya-peng (李亞鵬), who was spotted at both Wong's concerts and the shooting of her new movie. Although both Wong and Lee claimed in public they were just "good friends" (and we all know what that means), Lee has reportedly been pursuing Wong for six month and dumped his actress girlfriend Zhou Xun (周迅) because of Wong. The Apple Daily (蘋果日報) had the last word on the affair last week when it wrote that Lee and Wong were spotted at 5am in the morning, holding hands, acting intimate and strolling around the ancient gate of Xian, after Wong's Xian concert. The two were said to be staying at the same hotel in Xian. Sounds conclusive.
Finally, Taiwan's highest paid model Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) last week was moved to tears, yet again. Showing her degree diploma from the University of Toronto to the media, Lin insisted it was for real and that she had graduated as a history and economics double major. Weeks ago there was an Internet chatroom rumor that Lin's degree was fake. Local media began to interrogate her about the issue and last Friday Lin gave her answer. "I've never thought of using my degree to promote myself. I just appreciate very much the public's concern about my background," she said in a Great Daily News story. In an analysis piece, however, the paper went on to say that a BA from the University of Toronto is "not difficult to get." The paper compared Lin's degree with Lee Hom Wang (王力宏), who graduated from Williams College, and Faith Yang (楊乃文), who graduated from Sydney University, and Linda, who graduated from Canada Queen's University. Compared with these schools, Lin's degree is easy to get, concluded the newspaper, showing the model no mercy.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Taiwan has next to no political engagement in Myanmar, either with the ruling military junta nor the dozens of armed groups who’ve in the last five years taken over around two-thirds of the nation’s territory in a sprawling, patchwork civil war. But early last month, the leader of one relatively minor Burmese revolutionary faction, General Nerdah Bomya, who is also an alleged war criminal, made a low key visit to Taipei, where he met with a member of President William Lai’s (賴清德) staff, a retired Taiwanese military official and several academics. “I feel like Taiwan is a good example of
March 2 to March 8 Gunfire rang out along the shore of the frontline island of Lieyu (烈嶼) on a foggy afternoon on March 7, 1987. By the time it was over, about 20 unarmed Vietnamese refugees — men, women, elderly and children — were dead. They were hastily buried, followed by decades of silence. Months later, opposition politicians and journalists tried to uncover what had happened, but conflicting accounts only deepened the confusion. One version suggested that government troops had mistakenly killed their own operatives attempting to return home from Vietnam. The military maintained that the
Before the last section of the round-the-island railway was electrified, one old blue train still chugged back and forth between Pingtung County’s Fangliao (枋寮) and Taitung (台東) stations once a day. It was so slow, was so hot (it had no air conditioning) and covered such a short distance, that the low fare still failed to attract many riders. This relic of the past was finally retired when the South Link Line was fully electrified on Dec. 23, 2020. A wave of nostalgia surrounded the termination of the Ordinary Train service, as these train carriages had been in use for decades
Lori Sepich smoked for years and sometimes skipped taking her blood pressure medicine. But she never thought she’d have a heart attack. The possibility “just wasn’t registering with me,” said the 64-year-old from Memphis, Tennessee, who suffered two of them 13 years apart. She’s far from alone. More than 60 million women in the US live with cardiovascular disease, which includes heart disease as well as stroke, heart failure and atrial fibrillation. And despite the myth that heart attacks mostly strike men, women are vulnerable too. Overall in the US, 1 in 5 women dies of cardiovascular disease each year, 37,000 of them
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