Pop Stop

It's official! Perfect Hong Kong couple Gigi Leung (梁詠琪) and Ekin Cheng (鄭伊健) have split up after six years of their media-genic relationship. Leung made public the break-up news last week by faxing a letter to the press that read, "after all those years, we've both grown up and changed ... We decided it's better to become friends rather than staying as lovers."

The model ex-couple even broke up in a graceful way, stressing that the break-up didn't involve a third party nor hard feelings between them. Some gossip insiders believe distance was the reason for the split, as Leung often travels abroad for work and Cheng spends most of the time playing computer games at home. Others think Cheng's contin-uing close relationship with his previous girlfriend, sexy star Maggie Siu (邵美琪) pushed Leung over the edge.

Either way, the prince-and-princess-living-happily-ever-after fairly tale has once again, proved unattainable in real life.

After a failed attempt to woo Patty Hou (侯佩岑) more than one year ago, former KMT chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) son, Sean Lien (連勝文), is back in the gossip columns with a new date, Tsai Yi-shan (蔡依珊), a young, beautiful doctoral candidate from a very rich family.

When asked to comment on the story, Jay Chou (周杰倫) gave his usual "why-should-I-care" response. It's probably because his majesty has some other things to worry about.

According to the Liberty Times, Lau Wai-keung (劉偉強), director of Initial D (頭文字D), gave Chou an all-night lashing last week in Hong Kong. The reason and content of Lau's lecture was not made public, but Chou was said to have acted like a compliant pupil in front of Lau. After all, Lau is like a father figure to Chou, and helped the king get his first Golden Horse Award.

Chou exposed his shy side to Jet Li (李連杰), however. To show his admiration for the kung fu king, Chou volunteered to write the theme song for Li's new martial-arts period flick Fearless (霍元甲), which is slated to go on general release in Taiwan on Jan. 27 .

At the press conference held to announce the movie's theme song, Li said he was a bit worried to learn that Chou was responsible for the tune, as "his beats are even faster than my kicks."

Li did however express his pleasure at the outcome.

Li also spoke favorably of Chou's directorial talent and asked the Mando-pop king not to forget to cast him in his films when he becomes a director one day.

And his majesty's response? Nervous and almost speechless on meeting with his life-long idol Li, Chou said he would not dare to direct the action hero.

Winning the first place on the Mando-pop bill board in the first month of this year, Wang Lee-hom's (王力宏) new album Unparalleled Hero (蓋世英雄) has already sold 1 million copies across Asia. The key to his success? Apart from his pretty face, Wang creatively combines Chinese traditional music with hip hop beats to create a new fusion style called "chinked-out" music.

As one of Pop Stop's showbiz informers pointed out, "chink" was and is a racial slur referring to Chinese people. By turning the negative connotation upside-down, Wang said the term would be given a new meaning in relation to a musical style that is international and Chinese at the same time.

Judging from the success of Wang's new sound, the word "chink" will soon become a moniker of cool like "taike" has.