Adored by women and gay men alike, Hong Kong bad boy Daniel Wu (吳彥祖) is a star with attitude who often gets himself into trouble with the paparazzi. Last weekend in Taipei after a night of bacchanalian debauchery, Wu was spotted going back to the hotel drunk, but not so drunk that he didn't spot a stake out.
The agile star moved quickly, pushing the cameraman into the hotel lobby, grabbing his arms so that he couldn't take pictures and shouting "Don't use violence" while retreating to the elevator.
Unfortunately, the whole thing was caught by another paparazzo so that fans got a chance to see the star's moves.
Hong Kong's age-resistant beauty Michelle Lee (李嘉欣) continues to be a troublemaker for wealthy, married men. On her 36th birthday last week, a mysterious man calling himself "the one" spent over NT$1.2 million on full page ads in a couple of local papers to wish her happy birthday. "The one" later turned out to be a former of Lee's whose name has been linked to various Hong Kong female stars.
Currently Lee is going out with a married business man who continues to see his 24-year-old ex-girlfriend every now and then. Lee seems to have a tough choice since the two guys are equally matched in terms of wealth and promiscuity.
Standing out because of one's lifestyle choices can be a big no-no these days. China's super girl Li Yuchun's
As the school administration denied the allegation, Li's old college classmates certainly shared a common resentment against the star, who was said to have indulged in lots of smoking and drinking while she was meant to be studying. She failed plenty of classes.
A word of consolation to the pupils of socialism: fame and wealth can get a person anywhere in the capitalistic world. So get used to it.
Two martial arts megastars Jackie Chan (成龍) and Jet Li (李連杰) are one step closer to their first-time collaboration as the story for a new joint project seems to please the pair. The film is said to be about a modern martial arts fighter who falls down a time tunnel and travels back to ancient China to have an adventure with Sun Wu-kung (孫悟空), the Monkey King.
According to the Chinese-language press, both Li and Chan have their eye on the monkey role, so it looks like the duo will have some fighting to do before one of them can show off on the big sceen.
The local music scene is currently caught up in the contin-uous fight between indie label Taiwan Colors Music (角頭音樂) and Formosa TV (民視), both of which will hold their own separate annual Kungliao Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival (貢寮海洋音樂祭) next month at Fulung beach. Taiwan Colors, the festival's founder, which has organized the event for the past six years unexpectedly lost the contract to Formosa TV this year and decided to take the matter into its own hands by hosting a separate event.
Determined to cash in on the rock music festival despite confusion and discontent from bands and music fans, the TV network will host the event during the third weekend of July. It has rented the beach for the fourth weekend, which is when the Taiwan Colors' Ho-Hai-Yan is slated to take place. The bureaucrats of the Kungliao Township have added insult to injury by shirking responsibility for double booking the location.
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
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby