Although the birth of Angelina Jolie's and Brad Pitt's new baby girl may be regarded as one of the biggest celebrity news items of the century by Western media,Chinese diva Faye Wang (王菲) took some of the limelight last week, giving birth to her second daughter on the same day. Wang's husband Li Ya-peng (李亞鵬) shed tears of delight at the sight of child, who weighed 4kg, a big child by Asian standards.
You would have thought that this would bring an end to the two-week stake out by Chinese-language media, who wouldn't let Wang out of their sight in the lead up to the birth. Hong Kong media estimated that the total cost of following the star day and night was around NT$4 million. But there is no rest for the paparazzi, who are in an all out race to take the first photo of the baby, a money shot worth NT$2 million. This is small potatoes compared to the NT$160 million which the photo of Jolie's baby fetched.
As for the future Wang's plans: to become the contracted star at Li's agency firm and work at giving him a son.
On the international scene, Taiwan's biggest-budget horror flick, Silk (
Love seemed to have been in the air at Cannes. Thailand-born, Hong Kong-based director Oxide Pang (彭順) was in high-spirits at the showing of his new horror flick, Re-cycle (鬼域), and opened his heart to the press about his romance with the film's leading actress, Angelica Lee (李心潔). "When I saw her for the first time, I knew she was mine," Pang said. Through reporters, he even proposed marriage, but Lee played cute saying "I'm not hearing you."
Local celebrities are now gearing up for the 17th Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎), Taiwan's equivalent of the US Grammies, which is ready to roll on June 10 at the Taipei Arena (台北巨蛋). The Internet is already buzzing with predictions as who will take away the big prizes at Taiwan's most important musical event, which will be attended by some of Asia's hottest musicians. Yet one can easily detect some friction in the heated discussion over this year's less than star-studded nomination list. The Double J pair of Jay Chou (周杰倫) and Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) are notably absent.
With significantly fewer consistent hit-song singers among the nominations, some people have questioned the jury members' expertise, suggesting that if the top-ten teen crowd is not catered to, nobody will pay much attention to the Golden Melody event. Others have praised the judges for sticking to principles and not bowing to popular taste.
Whatever the reasons, the pop idols have been squeezed out by the alternative crowd.
The biggest surprise is Best Male Singer nominee Puyuma folk singer Kimbo, also known as Hu De-fu (
Previously ignored by the Golden Melody, ABT R&B musician David Tao (陶吉吉) finds justice with the album The Great Leap Forward 2005 (太平盛世), which earned him six nominations in the Best Male Singer, Best Album and Best Song categories. To the dismay of many, Wang Lee-hom's (王力宏) Heroes of Earth, one of last year's best selling record, only earned him a single nomination for Best Male Singer, and with critics saying that his new album offers little that is different from his previous work, he is not favored for the prize.
According to an ongoing online poll at the official Golden Melody Awards Web site, it is the lesser known musician Ken Wu (
As for the female leads, Malaysia-born folk rock singer Penny Tai (
Taiwan alt-rock godfather Wu Bai (
The primaries for this year’s nine-in-one local elections in November began early in this election cycle, starting last autumn. The local press has been full of tales of intrigue, betrayal, infighting and drama going back to the summer of 2024. This is not widely covered in the English-language press, and the nine-in-one elections are not well understood. The nine-in-one elections refer to the nine levels of local governments that go to the ballot, from the neighborhood and village borough chief level on up to the city mayor and county commissioner level. The main focus is on the 22 special municipality
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) invaded Vietnam in 1979, following a year of increasingly tense relations between the two states. Beijing viewed Vietnam’s close relations with Soviet Russia as a threat. One of the pretexts it used was the alleged mistreatment of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. Tension between the ethnic Chinese and governments in Vietnam had been ongoing for decades. The French used to play off the Vietnamese against the Chinese as a divide-and-rule strategy. The Saigon government in 1956 compelled all Vietnam-born Chinese to adopt Vietnamese citizenship. It also banned them from 11 trades they had previously
Jan. 12 to Jan. 18 At the start of an Indigenous heritage tour of Beitou District (北投) in Taipei, I was handed a sheet of paper titled Ritual Song for the Various Peoples of Tamsui (淡水各社祭祀歌). The lyrics were in Chinese with no literal meaning, accompanied by romanized pronunciation that sounded closer to Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) than any Indigenous language. The translation explained that the song offered food and drink to one’s ancestors and wished for a bountiful harvest and deer hunting season. The program moved through sites related to the Ketagalan, a collective term for the
As devices from toys to cars get smarter, gadget makers are grappling with a shortage of memory needed for them to work. Dwindling supplies and soaring costs of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) that provides space for computers, smartphones and game consoles to run applications or multitask was a hot topic behind the scenes at the annual gadget extravaganza in Las Vegas. Once cheap and plentiful, DRAM — along with memory chips to simply store data — are in short supply because of the demand spikes from AI in everything from data centers to wearable devices. Samsung Electronics last week put out word
RSS