Oscar-winning director Ang Lee (李安) is back in Taiwan to celebrate his mother's 80th birthday, and also received the Order of the Brilliant Star Second Class from president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). His reception during this visit has marked him out as a local hero and virtual superstar, and although notoriously shy and soft-spoken, he has been quick to capitalize on his prestige with people in high places.
At a conference on Taiwan's movie industry, Premiere Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) felt that he was no more than a warm up act for the director, and was even the victim of a little good natured reprimand, when Lee took him to task on the government's cultural development policies.
At a talk given at his alma mater, Lee called on students to enjoy "their age of innocence," to enjoy life and not take their studies too seriously. At the same time, he issued a call to arms, saying that "culture is a competition," and that Taiwan's students must not loose their educational advantage over students in China. The man seems a little conflicted; is this the result of too much attention?
With the imminent release of Jasmine Women (茉莉花開), leading actress Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) has found yet another podium from which gripe -- the cause, the fact that she didn't get a cuddle from Ang Lee despite all her hard work in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ( 臥虎藏龍). She criticized Lee for being stingy with his praise on set, and said that Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) would often get a hug of encouragement. Poor neglected darling, and after all these years as well.
Lee responded by saying that he had simply been too embarrassed to show such a young starlet.
Boyband F4 were interviewed on the CNN program Talk Asia last month. On the program, which aired last week, the group revealed a level of vacuousness in conversation with host Lorraine Hahn that needed to be seen to be believed. When asked about future prospects, band member Vanness (吳建豪), who was brought up in the US, said the band hoped to break into the US market. Good luck to them, but good looks, a floppy hairdo and boyish charm can only achieve so much.
Speaking of talent, or the lack thereof, singer Wang Lee-hom (王力宏) got a rather backhanded compliment when his two albums failed to make it into the top 10 Chinese-language albums this year. He didn't make it last year either, but he was hanging tough, saying that as long as his fans continued to support him, rankings such as this one hardly mattered. Well that's one way of saying he's not too fazed that critics think he lacks talent.
David Tao, who has had four albums in the top 10, was rather prissy when he said that he was happy to be selected again, and how glad he was to be selected on talent alone, as he was not entangled in many steamy scandals.
May Day's (五月天) Asian tour came to an end earlier this week at Hong Kong's Colosseum (香港紅勘體育館). There was no doubt that they were hugely popular with the crowd, whose repeated calls of "encore" dragged the concert out for three hours, with the result that the band were fined NT$60,000 by the Hong Kong police for exceeding the scheduled concert time.
Amid all this excitement, it has emerged that May Day's drummer Ming (冠佑) went off the rails when the group was in Shanghai late last month. Ming has made a statement to the effect that he is still faithful to his fiancee Wang Hsing-chi (王行芝), but comments by the woman in question have done nothing to douse the gossip.
"You marry a man to stop people talking," she is quoted as having said, "but you take a lover to give life a bit of flavor." We might be hearing more about Ming before too long.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist