Actress Lin Wei-chun (
Not surprisingly, given the importance of superstition and ghosts in Taiwan, the hospital's administration, according to The Great Daily News (
Meanwhile, Lin's agency is trying to mediate with the hospital and find some way to apologize for Lin's verbal slip-up so the show can continue filming at the site.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Taiwan's own supermodel Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) is paying the price for fame recently with the endless gossip about her rumored lovers and whether or not her University of Toronto diploma was fake. So far none of the rumors have stuck, but that hasn't stopped the gossip rags from slinging mud. Next Magazine (壹週刊) this week rolled out one of its favorite old tricks with a piece about a Japanese porno look-a-like of Lin Chi-ling. The magazine even dug into its archives for a retrospective photo layout of other stars with porno doppelgangers. News anchorwoman Patty Ho (侯佩岑), A-mei (阿妹) and Coco Lee (李玟) are all featured, but the most uncanny resemblance is of Jay Chou's (周杰倫) porno stunt doubles.
Hong Kong singer/actor (aren't they all singer/actors?) Leon Lai (
Another shout out from Hong Kong went to John Woo (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Closer to home, tomorrow starts the Taipei Pop Music Festival at the Songshan Tobacco Factory. Wen Lan (
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
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby