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
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist