The 2005 Top Ten Albums and Songs awards ceremony organized by the little known Chinese-speaking Musician Association (中華音樂人交流協會) received a surprising amount of media coverage last Friday as one of its awardees, Mando-pop king Jay Chou (周杰倫) dropped a bombshell by claiming that he and Patty Hou (侯佩岑) "have never been together."
His Majesty first enraged fans of China's hotshot Li Yuchun (李宇春) when he responded to rumors of a romance between him and Li, saying, "It is the most ridiculous story about me since I've been in the showbiz … I'd rather go out with my assistant really."
Then, when reporters asked the routine question regarding him and his alleged sweetheart Hou, Chou shocked everyone by coldly commenting, "I've never said we were together, so there is no need for me to clarify anything. You can just write whatever you like."
The poor former news anchorwoman so far hasn't publicly commented on Chou's frosty remark. The star's ex, Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), offered an insider's interpretation of Chou's comment, saying that the "we were never together" remark was probably Chou's pet phrase. Nobody knows better than Tsia since she too was a victim of Chou's icy treatment.
On a happier note, following the engagement party of the now three-month pregnant supermodel Huang Hsiao-lei (洪曉蕾) earlier this month, senior, hearing-impaired model Wang Xiao-shu (王曉書), who is now four-months pregnant, tied the knot with her sweetheart last Sunday at the Far Eastern Hotel (遠東飯店), crowded with barbie-doll-figured models.
Also present was Lin Chih-ling (林志玲), who was misty-eyed virtually the entire weekend over her girlfriends' happiness, a sight the local media interpreted as a personal longing for a steady relationship.
Or it could be a lament for the loss of a potential husband. At Huang's hen party last Saturday, Lin bumped into one of her rumored boyfriends Tsai Bo-han (蔡伯翰), son of hotel tycoon Tsai Chen-yang (蔡辰洋). A happy reunion turned into a diplomatic staging as Tsia's "real" girlfriend didn't let Tsia get out of earshot.
A word to the Pop Stop wise: if you happen to come across the Chinese blog of Asian heartthrob Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武), don't be fooled, it's a fraud. The agent said the Japan-born star can barely read Chinese, much less write it. And the only chance his fans bumping into him in cyberspace is in online computer games, which the star is allegedly addicted to.
As for the international cinema news, Chinese director Lou Ye's (婁燁) latest film
Rumor has it that Chinese reporters have been slapped with an official, full-scale ban on reporting any news related to the film since Lou screened the movie in Cannes without government approval.
As for Lou himself, he seemed reluctant to wage war against the government. "As a director, I am responsible to the crew… And I am willing to make any compromise to let the film get screened in China," Lou said to the local press last weekend in Cannes.
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