Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), Taiwan's answer to pop queen Madonna, proved her credentials last Saturday when her joint concert with Stanley Huang (黃立行) left many fans hot under the collar. After an onstage snog with Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒) and some provocative "yoga" positions, Tsai cracked the whip and turned into an ambassador for the country's BDSM community by putting Huang through his paces.
In a more traditional take on a concert, Mayday's (五月天) bash on the same night at Banciao Stadium (板橋體育場) kicked off a round-island tour of concerts to promote the band's new chart-topping album Born to Love (為愛而生).
Fireworks and pyro-technics burned up millions of dollars in minutes and warmed up the free concert, while the ample supply of red wine at the after- party guaranteed the exhausted musicians and guests celebrated in true rock and roll style. Members of support band Champion (強辯) got so pissed they threw up. Classy.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, hottie Huang was given a tailor-made celebration party with a giant cake shaped like a pair of breasts, and the star revealed kinky details about his sex life with his former girlfriend.
In film-related news: Golden Horse winners Aaron Kwok (郭富城) and Gow Ian Iskander (吳景滔) were in town last weekend to promote their film, After This Our Exile (父子). The 41-year-old actor revealed to the press that he planned to tie the knot within the next five years, presumably with his "good friend" Chinese supermodel Lynn Xiong (熊黛林).
But it wasn't until Taiwanese tycoon Terry Kuo (郭台銘) showed up at the film's pre-screening last Saturday that Kwok exhibited his really friendly side. From the after-screening dinner at Fifi to the late-night KTV fete, Kwok brown-nosed the big boss who is a movie mogul in the making.
A heavyweight celebrity, Kuo has made a high-profile entry into the show business and quickly developed friendships with A-grade beauties such as Carina Lau (劉嘉玲), Tien Hsin (天心) and Rosamund Kwan (關之琳), a savvy businesswoman who said her acquaintance with Kuo began with her interest in investing in his ventures.
Self-styled "local king" (本土天王) Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) is another man busy with the ladies these days. The new additions to Wu's who's who of girlfriends are starlets Sung Hsin-ni (宋新妮) and Lin Jo-ya (林若亞). While Lin takes care of business running the restaurant she and Wu jointly invested in, Sung supplies the dinnertime company. Yet the man in the middle brushed off questions from intrepid reporters by saying both vixens were merely acquaintances.
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