It has been over a decade since Shatina Chen (陳思璇) started modeling, but it wasn't always her looks that got her noticed. When she was at school she won trophies on the track and on the softball field.
At 176cm, Chen is now known as Taiwan's "Queen of the Catwalk." She can hardly believe how well things have worked out for her.
"In the beginning, it was all just a bit of a laugh, but now I realize how far I've come."
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Even so, Chen said does not have high expectations for her future career as a supermodel and all she wishes for, she said, is to live a simple, happy life with her family.
As for her love life, she says, "I don't fall for people just like that ... I am way too independent. I don't consider seeking a romantic relationship my top priority. My family is more important to me right now."
Despite this she confided to me, in front of her family, that there is in fact a new man on the scene. "At the moment, we're just sending SMS messages back and forth, we are not really boyfriend and girlfriend yet," she said.
Having been without a boyfriend for a while, Chen would only let on that they have hung out just once, though they have been messaging for three months. She said she is not ready to settle down yet.
To be her boyfriend, she said, the lucky man has to be mature, serious and understanding of her profession. More importantly, he cannot expect her to be with him all the time.
Growing up with longer legs than other children of her age, Chen said she seemed to be a "bit of a giant" as far as her schoolmates were concerned. That's also why she joined the school's track team and earned a reputation as "a galloping antelope."
Her speed and long legs caught the attention of the physical education teacher at her elementary school, who invited her to join the school's track team.
Chen's agility and her long strides impressed everyone. Having heard her speak about what she did during her schooldays, she is obviously proud of her achievements.
"The 200m sprint was my forte. I hardly ever lost any races, simply because I've got longer legs. I could go twice as far as anyone else with one stride."
She reckoned she won "at least a dozen" medals in those days. Other than leading the field as a sprinter, Chen was also a serious softball and dodgeball player.
At times, she said, "I rushed to the make-up rooms backstage still wearing the dirty jersey I wore for games and started putting on make-up for a show. The roles I played at school and after school were quite confusing, but it was very different and fulfilling experience."
No one dared bully her at school, after they'd seen what she could do on the playing field, she said. In fact, she liked to hang around with the boys, and was quite the tomboy. She said she even beat up a boy who didn't want to "play ball" with her in a game.
As she was always good at every-thing she turned her hand to, Chen was never much of a worry for her parents. Unlike many Taiwanese parents, they never hit her.
Sitting next to Chen, Chen's mom said, "I was never worried. She could always cope by herself. She studied hard and played hard. And she is now making a name for herself as a model."
With "model fever" sweeping the country for the last few years, Chen is right in the limelight and is always answering the phone.
Whenever she's longing for a break from all the media attention, she turns to the 12 cats she keeps at home, the truly indispensable friends of the super model and her family.
-- translated by Daniel Cheng
Ajay Verma, a consultant gastroenterologist at Kettering general hospital in Northamptonshire, says our gut is a “complex machine.” “It is constantly providing us with the nutrition we need, initially to grow and develop, and then for us to survive, thrive and repair from injury and illness.” How can we keep it functioning well? Put simply: “Make sure what you put into it is balanced, and that you clear out its waste products adequately,” Verma says. “In a general gastroenterology clinic, the most common conditions we see are irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), gastroesophageal reflux disease, inflammatory bowel disease and constipation,” says Nisha
And so, in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all the experts on the Strait of Hormuz suddenly became experts on US-China-Taiwan relations. The Internet has certainly expanded human knowledge. Lots of these sudden experts made noise this week about Trump’s words after the meeting with PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平). Trump is going to sell out Taiwan! Longtime Taiwan commentator J. Michael Cole summed the situation up neatly in the Guardian: “We need to keep in mind that he has a tendency to say many things — sometimes contradicting himself within
Last week US President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter whether he would speak on the phone to the President of Taiwan. “l’ll speak to him. I speak to everybody. We have that situation very well in hand,” Trump said. This marked the second time in a couple of weeks he had said he would talk to the President of Taiwan. In 2016 he famously took a call from then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), when he was president-elect. Despite warnings that the apocalypse was nigh because of a phone call, the world quickly forgot about the conversation between two democratically-elected presidents.
May 25 to May 31 Few believed that apples could be cultivated on a commercial scale in Taiwan’s high mountains. When horticulturalist Cheng Chao-hsiung (程兆熊) first proposed the idea in 1955, both American and Taiwanese colleagues dismissed it as implausible, arguing that temperate fruit could not be reliably grown on a subtropical island, especially on rugged terrain. However, it was this terrain in the Central Mountain Range where many Chinese Civil War veterans were resettled in the late 1950s. With limited job prospects and no family in Taiwan, they were placed on cooperative farms aimed toward self-sufficiency. Some say the conditions
RSS