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.
“China wants to unify with Taiwan at the lowest possible cost, and it currently believes that unification will become easier and less costly as time passes,” wrote Amanda Hsiao (蕭嫣然) and Bonnie Glaser in Foreign Affairs (“Why China Waits”) this month, describing how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is playing the long game in its quest to seize Taiwan. This has been a favorite claim of many writers over the years, easy to argue because it is so trite. Very obviously, if the PRC isn’t attacking Taiwan, it is waiting. But for what? Hsiao and Glaser’s main point is trivial,
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