After shying away from media attention for a
while, Hong Kong pop diva Sammi Cheng (鄭秀文) returned to
cover pages last week with some noisy speculations about her suffering from the deadly illness lymphoma. The rumor started when pictures of her abnormally swollen face got out during the shooting of the latest film by director Stanley Kwan (關錦鵬), Chang Hen Ge (長恨歌, Song of Everlasting Sadness), in which Cheng played the leading lady and regarded this opportunity as a major
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
breakthrough in her acting career.
According to the Great Daily News (
Shanghai International Film Festival (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Cheng was kept from attending these events there was absolutely nothing wrong with her body or her lymph nodes. At the moment the star is not available to comment on the news of her possible disease because she is not in Hong Kong, said the same agent.
It should be a great comfort for Cheng to know, however, that according to a poll done by MTV, she is one of the pop singers that the public never wants to retire from the stage. The top honor goes to Taiwan's pride and joy
Chang Hui-mei (A-Mei,
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Jay Chou (
The newly emerged hot duo, Hu Qing-wen (胡晴雯) and Tang Zhi-ping (唐治平), might be a fake relationship after all. Tang has gained a lot of exposure since his "beauty book" was put out last week. And as if his seductive
body didn't get enough attention already, the man was then spotted making intimate contact with the fluttering Hu on the street, a few days after his books hit the shelves. However, the validity of their rumored romance was quickly under suspicion because the two have acted like two total strangers and have pretended it never happened ever since their make-out photos got published. Both parties have denied the whole episode is a mere publicity stunt.
The controversial remarks made by Jackie Chan (
into political turmoil. The local media interpreted his refusal to come back to Taiwan until the term of the current president ends as a gesture that ``hurt all of the Taiwanese people's feelings.'' The international superstar thought his words had been terribly twisted and misused, and decided to clear his name by issuing a statement last
week, saying he has always felt close to Taiwan and anything he said about this land, good or bad, is always out of love and in good will.
The Taiwanese band May Day (
reason for their absence but did admit that they were not particularly fond of the name of the show.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50