This week's edition of TVBS Weekly broke some big news when it reported that Wu Bai (伍佰), sometimes referred to as the godfather of Taiwanese rock, got married to his agent Chen Wen-pei (陳文佩) in Hong Kong last year.
The singer emerged to confirm their marriage, but corrected the report by announcing that the two actually tied the knot in Fukuoka, Japan, in 2003. The couple had kept their marriage a secret because, according to Wu Bai, "telling everyone wouldn't be fun." He denied, however, that the announcement was made because they were expecting a kid.
Last week the gossip rags in Taiwan and Hong Kong thought they'd struck gold when they released photos of Taiwanese pop diva Chang Hui-mei (A-Mei, 張惠妹) in the US under headlines suggesting that she was pregnant. It turns out she's just been enjoying the bread-heavy diet Stateside and has gained a little spare tire above the waistband. The suspicion was that her rumored boyfriend Lee Hom Wang (王力宏) was to be the proud father, but all the excitement was for naught.
Next Magazine (壹週刊) poin-ted out that since late last year their respective labels, Warner and Sony BMG have been acting like party-pooper parents and rebuffing invites for the two to attend each other's concerts in the capacity of special guest. Without that kind of Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) and Jay Chou (周杰倫) inter-label synergy, how then could they consummate their supposed union, the magazine asks?
Speaking of Tsai, she released a new album titled J-Game over the weekend. Ever since her emphatic split with Jay, when he was spotted in Japan with TV anchorwoman Patty Hou (侯佩岑), the media has found it difficult to mention Jolin's name without bringing up Jay in the same sentence, even at her own album release press conference. She's taking it all in stride, though, and told assembled reporters, "I don't mind if you all link everything I do [to Jay]. I just hope you're not still doing it in five years." The conference then proceeded with label representatives lighting a firework rocket that was meant to symbolize Jolin's skyrocketing success but instead went off course and almost started a fire.
Finally, model fever in Taiwan has elicited a backlash, and leave it to bad boy rocker Chang Chen-yue (張震嶽) to take the lead in popping the bubble. The singer will release a new EP next month with a song titled Model that makes light of the nationwide obsession with models and pokes fun at a few by name. Part of his EP-release show last weekend included getting MC Hotdog on stage for another swipe at models with the rapper's song I only like Taiwanese Chicks (我只愛台妹) that derides Lin Chih-ling (林志玲) and Patty Hou.
S.H.E. had a close brush with politics over the weekend, when a newspaper in Lanzhou, China, reported that the band had said that they weren't Chinese, but were Taiwanese. Not wanting to attract any part of the nationalist hysteria that's raged in China over the past several weekends, the girl band moved quickly to defuse the potential controversy by confirming that they had never been to Lanzhou and never been interviewed by any paper based there. They also noted in an open letter to the Great Daily News (大成報) that lies have been spread online about Ella being a cross-dresser and Selina dying in a car crash and that all the lies have caused them grievous harm.
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