POP STOP

The rumors of a romantic liaison between Jay Chou (周杰倫) and angel-faced anchorwoman Hou Pei-tsen (侯佩岑) were proven to be true this week after the lovebirds announced in separate press conferences that they were, indeed, an item.

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.

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.

Jolin's friends had been quoted in the Liberty Times (自由時報) and other major dailies over the previous days voicing support for the jilted singer and pointing accusing fingers at Jay for "doing the splits" (劈腿), although Jay said he and Jolin had never been in a relationship. Still, Jolin has chosen to leave the country to a secret desination to escape the media hounds and, according to the Apple Daily (蘋果日報), to cure her broken heart.

Momoko Tao (陶晶瑩), the ultimate celebrity-world insider, meanwhile, took a dig at Hou when she said at an autograph session Saturday for her bestselling book that if the anchorwoman wanted to put out a book she'd do best to make it a coffee-table book of sexy photos.

KMT Chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) son, Lien Sheng-wen (連勝文), who made no secret of his failed attempt to woo Hou last year, struck a more diplomatic note and wished the couple well.

Also ducking media this week has been beauty queen Chiang Cheng-yun (江承澐), who's checkered past as a saleswoman for a gangster-run funerary urn depository company came to light last week with suggestions that she defrauded the company and was on the lam for six years. She's denied being a fugitive, but her agent admitted in her place that she had made "a mistake" in her wild youth.

In another case of a Taiwanese pop act testing the waters in the US, Mayday (五月天) played to a 5,000-person crowd at Los Angeles' Grand Olympic Auditorium last Friday. The crowd was a 10th of what they can pull in Taipei, but was still regarded by local media as a milestone.

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.