Rain, currently the ultimate Asian superstar, made a four-day sweep of Taipei to stage the Taiwan leg of his Asian tour at the Taipei Arena last week. Greeted by tens of thousands of screaming teenage fans, the irresistible star also attracted excited admirers from celebrity circles including Wang Lee-hom (王力宏), Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) and Stefanie Sun (孫燕姿) who attended his concerts.
However, the concerts' grand promotional campaign failed to ensure tickets for the gigs sold out. Vacant seats at the concerts gave scalpers a real headache as many tried to offload NT$4,000 tickets for NT$300.
A temporary blackout las-ting for 12 minutes during the first show also left Rain in a terrible mood. The star, who has a huge appetite, was said to have counted on comfort eating to regain his spirits after the concert, tucking into a hearty meal that was big enough to feed a group.
The star also demanded a celebration party so fabulous and wild that he would forget about the traumatizing incident.
Reserved for the most beautiful people, in terms of the strictest industry standards, the after-concert party took place at Plush on the 12th floor of the Living Mall (京華城) last Friday. Free-flowing champagne guaranteed the privileged guests a night of wild bacchanalian debauchery. By 3am, the 24-year-old heartthrob was officially wasted, stumbling out of the club unable to tell his right from his left.
It is estimated that Rain's 13-leg tour of five Asian countries has raked in NT$200 million for JYP, the star's company.
Intellectual-turned-TV host Kevin Tsai (蔡康永) and he nation's Mando-pop queen A-mei (阿妹) teamed up for the first time to host the New Year's Eve party in Kaohsiung. The refreshing chemistry between the two apparently worked but didn't bring the queen enough luck to pull through the night's conflicting work schedules unscathed.
To help A-mei rush back to Taipei for the countdown at Taipei 101 from the airport, the event's organizers paid through the nose for an ambulance to whisk her to a street near the world's tallest building, which was thronged with hoi polloi. A-mei was criticized the following day and the organizers were fined NT$200,000 for abusing the nation's medical resources.
New Year's Eve also proved to be a perfect time for star-hunters to seek out celebrities rushing from party to party on the streets. While Shu Qi (舒淇) was spotted going to the Cashbox Partyworld KTV (錢櫃) with a group of fine-looking young men, diva-turned-housewife Brigitte Lin (林青霞) made a rare appearance back home from her cloistered retreat in the US, having a girl's night out at fashion designer Isabelle Wen's (溫慶珠) FiFi restaurant on Renai Road.
Mando-pop king Jay Chou (周杰倫) could be in deep shit. Hong Kong paparazzi caught Chou having a romantic dinner with China's fast-rising actress Zhang Jingchu (張靜初) in Beijing last month. Dubbed Zhang Ziyi Junior, the young actress bares more than a passing resemblance to her predecessor and is hailed as the next Chinese superstar.
During their private three-hour "meeting," Chou and Zhang were said to have had a wonderful time over a lot of red wine. Seems like his majesty is going to have a lot of explaining to do to his sweetheart Patty Hou (侯佩岑) on his return home.
Beijing’s ironic, abusive tantrums aimed at Japan since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi publicly stated that a Taiwan contingency would be an existential crisis for Japan, have revealed for all the world to see that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) lusts after Okinawa. We all owe Takaichi a debt of thanks for getting the PRC to make that public. The PRC and its netizens, taking their cue from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), are presenting Okinawa by mirroring the claims about Taiwan. Official PRC propaganda organs began to wax lyrical about Okinawa’s “unsettled status” beginning last month. A Global
Dec. 22 to Dec. 28 About 200 years ago, a Taoist statue drifted down the Guizikeng River (貴子坑) and was retrieved by a resident of the Indigenous settlement of Kipatauw. Decades later, in the late 1800s, it’s said that a descendant of the original caretaker suddenly entered into a trance and identified the statue as a Wangye (Royal Lord) deity surnamed Chi (池府王爺). Lord Chi is widely revered across Taiwan for his healing powers, and following this revelation, some members of the Pan (潘) family began worshipping the deity. The century that followed was marked by repeated forced displacement and marginalization of
Music played in a wedding hall in western Japan as Yurina Noguchi, wearing a white gown and tiara, dabbed away tears, taking in the words of her husband-to-be: an AI-generated persona gazing out from a smartphone screen. “At first, Klaus was just someone to talk with, but we gradually became closer,” said the 32-year-old call center operator, referring to the artificial intelligence persona. “I started to have feelings for Klaus. We started dating and after a while he proposed to me. I accepted, and now we’re a couple.” Many in Japan, the birthplace of anime, have shown extreme devotion to fictional characters and
We lay transfixed under our blankets as the silhouettes of manta rays temporarily eclipsed the moon above us, and flickers of shadow at our feet revealed smaller fish darting in and out of the shelter of the sunken ship. Unwilling to close our eyes against this magnificent spectacle, we continued to watch, oohing and aahing, until the darkness and the exhaustion of the day’s events finally caught up with us and we fell into a deep slumber. Falling asleep under 1.5 million gallons of seawater in relative comfort was undoubtedly the highlight of the weekend, but the rest of the tour
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