Jay Chou (
Several years after the peak of F4's popularity in Taiwan, the four-piece boy band has found a new market in Japan, where the release of Meteor Shower (流星雨) took the band into the top 10 on Japan's main pop chart, marking a first for a Taiwanese band. Previously, the only non-Japanese to make it onto the country's pop chart were Jackie Chan (成龍) and three South Korean singers, all of whom sung in Japanese. F4's album is entirely in Mandarin and still squeezed its way into the No. 10 spot. Whatever's hot in Japan eventually makes its way to Taiwan, so could F4's success there portend a strong comeback at home? Watch for it this summer.
China's hottest export, Zhang Ziyi (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
The entertainment world suffered a grievous loss this week when one of the greatest Taiwanese comedians and actors, Ni Min-jan (
According to Ni's friends, the legendary veteran comedian had been greatly agitated by recent financial and family problems and suffered severe depression without realizing it.
Ni's second wife, Lee Li-hua (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Since Ni's 83-year-old mom has been hospitalized for cancer treatment, the family thought the news would be too much for her and decided to lie about Ni's death as long as they could. One of Ni's best friends, Yu Tien (
On a much happier note, Taiwanese beauty Chen Xiao-xuan (陳孝萱) recently confirmed the good news of her pregnancy after dodging rumors and questions for weeks. She and her metrosexual boyfriend Zhan
Ren-xiong (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
By 1971, heroin and opium use among US troops fighting in Vietnam had reached epidemic proportions, with 42 percent of American servicemen saying they’d tried opioids at least once and around 20 percent claiming some level of addiction, according to the US Department of Defense. Though heroin use by US troops has been little discussed in the context of Taiwan, these and other drugs — produced in part by rogue Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies then in Thailand and Myanmar — also spread to US military bases on the island, where soldiers were often stoned or high. American military policeman
Under pressure, President William Lai (賴清德) has enacted his first cabinet reshuffle. Whether it will be enough to staunch the bleeding remains to be seen. Cabinet members in the Executive Yuan almost always end up as sacrificial lambs, especially those appointed early in a president’s term. When presidents are under pressure, the cabinet is reshuffled. This is not unique to any party or president; this is the custom. This is the case in many democracies, especially parliamentary ones. In Taiwan, constitutionally the president presides over the heads of the five branches of government, each of which is confusingly translated as “president”
An attempt to promote friendship between Japan and countries in Africa has transformed into a xenophobic row about migration after inaccurate media reports suggested the scheme would lead to a “flood of immigrants.” The controversy erupted after the Japan International Cooperation Agency, or JICA, said this month it had designated four Japanese cities as “Africa hometowns” for partner countries in Africa: Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania. The program, announced at the end of an international conference on African development in Yokohama, will involve personnel exchanges and events to foster closer ties between the four regional Japanese cities — Imabari, Kisarazu, Sanjo and
Sept. 1 to Sept. 7 In 1899, Kozaburo Hirai became the first documented Japanese to wed a Taiwanese under colonial rule. The soldier was partly motivated by the government’s policy of assimilating the Taiwanese population through intermarriage. While his friends and family disapproved and even mocked him, the marriage endured. By 1930, when his story appeared in Tales of Virtuous Deeds in Taiwan, Hirai had settled in his wife’s rural Changhua hometown, farming the land and integrating into local society. Similarly, Aiko Fujii, who married into the prominent Wufeng Lin Family (霧峰林家) in 1927, quickly learned Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) and
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