Stephanie Sun (孫燕姿) made an impressive comeback this week, following a year of relative inactivity, with a new album titled My Love (我的愛), which sold 200,000 copies even before hitting the shelves. The Singapore-born singer spent the past year giving her vocal chords a rest, citing what she called "burnout" after releasing seven albums in three years. Now her well-rested voice is primed and ready for another round of intense promotion and welcome-back concerts. Stephanie also has two videos in the works for the new album, each with a NT$5 million budget, the first of which finished shooting in Paris last week.
And in Hong Kong last week, Canto-pop legend Sam Hui warmed hearts by saying that "now that the territory is part of China" it should enact laws that allow for the execution of paparazzi. The preferred method for executing the press, he said, would be by shooting.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
That's not too different from Jacky Wu's (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Also in China last week were Blackie (
nail-biter NBA exhibition game. The two almost didn't get to watch the game, though, after they snuck into the lineup on the court during the pre-game broadcast of the US national anthem and were threatened with ejection from the hall by the Chinese security guards. China's other big star, Zhang Ziyi (
Zhang is still basking in the glow of the dual successes of Hero in North America this summer and of 2046 now playing in Asia. Tuesday was the opening of 2046 in Japan and its Japanese star Kimura Takuya surprised everyone, not least director Wong Kar Wai (
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and