Boy bands are supposed to be filled with doe-eyed cuddly hunks, right? Not necessarily, as proven by the disconcerting news last week that Chang Shu-wei (張書偉) of the band Energy, finalized an out-of-court settlement with an ex-girlfriend, whom he beat in November of 2002. According to a report in the Liberty Times (自由時報), Chang's ex-girlfriend, surnamed Hsieh (謝), came to Chang's house to wake him for class and for doing that favor was beaten in the head, neck and back by Chang, who was reportedly still drunk from the previous night's revelry and did not want to get out of bed. Chang reportedly threw his comforter over Hsieh, trapping her underneath it, and beat and kicked her. Hsieh was treated at Renai Hospital for minor cuts and bruises. The two sides reached a settlement for NT$160,000.
After pseudo-alternative rock singer Chang Chen-yue's (張震嶽) stunt comparing Taiwanese and Western sausage sizes (Taiwanese are much bigger) last week for the media, as reported in Pop Stop, the singer aimed a sharp comment at Jay Chou (周杰倫) on TVBS-G this week. On the station's entertainment news show, A-yue (阿嶽) said Jay's songs sucked and that the supposed king of Mando-pop hadn't improved since coming onto the scene some four years ago. The China Times (中國時報) followed up with a call to Jay's label Alfa, which indulged with a simple barbed rebuke that album sales should speak for themselves. Chang sells a fraction of Jay's total album sales.
Last weekend Lee Hom Wang (王立宏) showed his ambitions of climbing the ladder toward becoming the biggest star in Mando-pop with a huge concert in Shanghai attended by 80,000 fans. Wang set a record for a Taiwanese pop star putting on a show in China by spending NT$20 million on the stage, sound system and lights. Even the misty rains that fell all month in Shanghai let up for the show, a stroke of luck attributed in reports to Wang's lucky pair of black underwear that he wears for shows. Not in attendance at the concert was Wang's buddy A-mei (阿妹), but the crowd chanted her name nevertheless. If Chinese fans of A-mei were upset she couldn't make Wang's Shanghai show, they'll be vindicated in Beijing at the end of this month when she puts on a concert in Beijing -- barring any last-minute
PHOTO: LIBERTY TIMES
complications.
Hebe of the red-hot girl band S.H.E. revealed something new about herself in Sunday's Apple Daily (蘋果日報). In a tender reminiscence to a moment in elementary school, the singer said she accidentally let rip with a fart that was audible to the entire school amassed at the morning flag-raising ceremony. Hebe said she tried to play it off as though nothing had happened.
Always ready to rub salt in wounds, Next Magazine (壹週刊) made a cover story this week of Little S' reaction to the reported love affair between TV news anchor Hou Pei-tsen (
TV host and crooner Chang Fei (張菲) has been ultra-busy lately, having released an album of old lounge tunes and doing the voice-over for the Chinese version of the animated Garfield movie due out July 23. At the press conference announcing the movie's upcoming release, Chang said he was perfect for the role because, like Garfield, he is "humorous, interesting, smart, lazy and lecherous."
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not