Proof the casting couch not only exists but is still popular came from China this week. According to actress Zhang Yu (張鈺) it's difficult to get ahead in the film business unless you are intimately involved with the director. She even posted a video on the yoQoo.com Web site of Jing Hao (金浩) measuring up a starlet under the covers. Zhang has previously exposed directors for taking advantage of actresses and perhaps this is why she has had to resort to posting videos of herself on the Web dressed in pajamas.
Related news was disturbing fans of "Ice Cream" this week. They learned Lin Chih-lin (林志玲), which sounds like ice cream in Chinese, hence the nickname, was melting under the pressure after learning that sacrifices she made to secure a part in a Hollywood flick had come to naught, or very little. To get the role in John Woo's (吳宇森) Battle of Red Cliff (赤壁之戰) Lin jumped the director at a hotel in Shanghai. Thinking she would have to get on a horse for the film she took lessons to conquer her fear of riding, after suffering a serious fall last year. Then Chinese media criticized her for sounding like a doll, so she did voice training and can now approximate the sounds of a normal human being.
Despite Lin's hard work, Apple Daily revealed it has seen the script and her only role is to look pretty, pour tea and say two lines. The paper is calling this her "vase crisis." A vase, in Chinese, is slang for pretty but useless. Even so, Ice Cream's fans were not too worried. They knew she would be having a word in Woo's ear this week, as he is a guest at the 51st Asia-Pacific Film Festival in Taipei. Lin is also one of the hosts at the awards ceremony tonight, having secured insurance cover of NT$20 million for a risque routine. Lin will swing in the air, bend over backwards and do the splits, according to Apple. Woo has, perhaps, seen all this before, but if it doesn't move him then presumably nothing will.
Except, possibly, big breasts popping out of bras. Pan Wei-ru (潘慧如) has bounced back into the limelight after her modeling career hit the skids a year or so ago. Then, as if by magic, her bust increased two sizes, her nipples were photographed saying hello at a press conference and she made it onto the FHM magazine cover. She now hosts a TV program and is said to be dating a rich man. Surely, Apple demanded, this fairytale turnaround was due to surgery? They even showed her a picture from seven years ago with crew cut hair and no visible breasts, which seemed to confirm they arrived later. "Oh come on, I'm just pushing them up," she replied, admitting however that she had undergone "minor" surgery some time ago.
Other actresses/models in denial include Little S (小S), whose convoluted explanation for her bosom enlargement was that a doctor gave her medicine for pimples on her back and six months later a miracle occurred when she became a 32C.
Chen Yu-han (陳瑀涵) went from 32C to 34D after eight months of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. Amazingly she put on weight — all of it, apparently, where her breasts used to be. Not.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless