The rumors of a romantic liaison between Jay Chou (
The pair provided scant details of their budding romance, but confirmed that they were closer than just friends and asked if the the media could please leave them alone. Fat chance. The story was front-page news in all the major papers and dominated the gossip rags until news emerged of Korean actress Lee Eun-joo's suicide Tuesday.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Once the Jay-Hou story began to stale, Jay's erstwhile rumored paramour Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), who was said to be washing her face with tears over the affair, hosted a press conference Tuesday to let everyone know that she was, in fact, fine and that everyone should buy her new 224-page Jolin English Diary Book due out soon.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Jolin's friends had been quoted in the Liberty Times (
Momoko Tao (
KMT Chairman Lien Chan's (
Also ducking media this week has been beauty queen Chiang Cheng-yun (
In another case of a Taiwanese pop act testing the waters in the US, Mayday (
This weekend all eyes will be on the Oscar celebration to see if Zhang Yimou's (張藝謀) Hero (英雄) can keep up the momentum for Chinese-language films gathered in Berlin last week, where Gu Changwei's (顧長衛) Peacock (孔雀) won the Jury Grand Prize and Tsai Ming-liang' (蔡明亮) walked away with the prize for artistic contribution to film for The Wayward Cloud (天邊一朵雲). The Oscar nominee's star, Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) was also the recipient Tuesday of the Hong Kong Critics Association award for best actress for her role in 2046. Tony Leung (梁朝偉) took the honors for the best male actor.
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