The annual musical pilgrimage to Spring Scream has come to an end and Kenting is once again restored to its tropical quiet. But on a peaceful, breezy early Monday morning on the beach, singer Shino Lin (林曉培), a guest musician at the festival, was spotted lying on top of a rugged young man in after-party languor, near a group of dozens of people enjoying a beautiful sunrise and camp fire. As the sun got higher and warmer, the seemingly wasted singer finally got up but could barely walk without her friends coming to her aid.
Later that day, Shino
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PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Another couple wasn't so lucky to get away from the watchful eyes of the media so easily. The questionable extramarital affair between the former TVBS sportscaster Cheng Sheng-hung (陳勝鴻) and TVBS-N news channel anchorwoman Pan Yen-fei (潘彥妃) has dominated the gossip pages for two consecutive weeks now. It's impossible to get away from the media hype even if you try.
Accused by one of his many ex-girlfriends -- a woman identified as Miss Lin -- that he videotapes his sexual encounters without his partner's consent, Cheng has changed his testimony back and forth, saying once that Pan was fully aware when the intimate pictures of them kissing and cuddling were taken, but saying something totally different later.
Most of the main characters in this show have been telling their self-contradictory, fabricated stories while following their instincts for self-preservation. But Pan is refusing to play the leading lady in the soap opera any more. The married anchorwoman quit her job right after the affair was exposed and intimate photos took up the front pages of every local newspaper. She left a confessional note to the public last Friday, saying in a tortured, heart-broken tone, ``I've left Taiwan and won't be back for a long long time. I will vanish in silence.''
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Not every love story is X-rated and promiscuous. Hong Kong's sweetheart Lin Jia-xin (林嘉欣) blew a refreshing breeze into the gossip scene when she was spotted going to a musical with her musician boyfriend, Chen Guang-rong (陳光容). Wearing jeans, sneakers and black-framed glasses, the star looked even prettier without traces of make-up. Rumor has it that Lin's agent got really pissed at her high-profile romance and decided to ``freeze'' her. The smiling young actress denied the freeze talks, saying she is just taking a break from her busy schedule and has been having a great time with her honey.
It was recently reported that Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武) has an evil brother living on the dark side, who owes the Taiwanese mafia a huge debt and has been on the lam for a while now. The star is following the code of secrecy, or "omerta," about the affair and at a recent beauty-product endorsement press conference in Shanghai on Tuesday, the organizer got really nervous about a possible confrontation between the media and the star, deciding to limit reporters to five questions each. One local media member, however, broke the rules and popped the forbidden question. The princely star said nothing and gave a charming smile instead. Magically, everybody seemed melted by his angelic beauty and forgot he was just masterfully dodging the unwelcome subject.
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist