The "King of Wind" Kenny G blew into Taipei last week for a concert and was caught trying to have sax with a local lady by Next (壹週刊) magazine. The frizzy-haired musician has a wife and two kids but this did not stop him wining and dining TV actress An Yi-xuan (安以軒). The two were spotted discussing slap tongue and circular blowing techniques at the Sheraton hotel, a restaurant and the club Champagne.
Dubbed the "five-hour date" by Next, its intrepid reporters managed to listen in to the couple's conversations, one of which involved An teaching the eager G to speak Chinese. For the record, the easy-listening maestro learned to say, "I want to make friends with you" and "Taiwanese ladies are very pretty." Next failed to report the conversation they had in the hotel elevator, but it probably started something like this.
Kenny G: "Do you like this tune?"
An Yi-xuan: "It sounds familiar."
Next then went on to detail the depredations of other visiting "foreign stars." These included the male members of Black Eyed Peas chatting up the Luxy ladies in the club's VIP area; the cuddly Matthew Lien reviewing Taipei's love motels with a pretty assistant; Michael Jordan's adventures in Mint; Jean-Claude Van Damme's intimate piano bar conversations; and Wesley Snipes' procurement of three prostitutes on his movie company account: one each for his bouncers and one for himself.
Stephanie Sun (孫燕姿) was photographed burning ghost money and praying at a temple in Taipei this week. She was probably asking for some good publicity for a change. Earlier this month the Singaporean diva and her crew were said to have been "robbed at gunpoint" of NT$1 million by local villains in Cairo, where she was shooting the video for her new album Against the Light (逆光).
Speculation this was a ploy by her record company, EMI Capitol, to drum up media interest in the skinny singer was given credence when Sun turned up on TVBS to present the weather report. Why? Apple Daily (蘋果日報) revealed the TV station's magazine (TVBS周刊) was planning to run an expose on the bizarre Egypt story, but pulled it at the last moment.
According to TVBS executives this was because they could not get a reaction from the record company in time. EMI's offer of NT$5 million in advertisements and Sun's forced smile over a weather map, however, clearly did arrive in time. Though the idea of pop stars talking about hot air and depressions over the Strait has a kind of synergy, Pop Stop doubts whether this is a new trend.
It appears to be just a matter of time before Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) Chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) pops the question to Carina Lau (劉嘉玲). The Hong Kong actress has, according to Apple, bought a NT$180 million house in Shanghai to add to the properties she has bought elsewhere in China and Hong Kong. The magnetic Lau has previously admitted she wasn't much of a businesswoman but obviously has confidence in Gou's acumen and her powers of attraction.
Computer game developers are getting ahead of the curve and the Chinese Web site www.163.com had a flash game featuring Lau in the middle of a seesaw, with Gou and love rival Tony Leung (梁朝偉) on either side. In the game, bad gossip knocked Lau's avatar into the sea. If Leung lost he fell into the water and shouted, "I also have money and could buy you an island, but I just don't want to." When Gou lost he called out, "I love Lin (Lau's last name), it's just that she doesn't love me." It's tough to be a loser in love if you're in the media spotlight.
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
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
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
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would