Pop Stop was taking a stroll around Ximending last weekend when it stumbled onto a rock concert in aid of Premier Su Tseng-chang's (蘇貞昌) presidential campaign. Hundreds of youngsters in green hats bearing the legend, "Brave: Keep Running Forward" (衝衝衝) were, appropriately, racing around taking names and handing out goodies. A young lady, who turned out to be one of Su's three daughters, was in the midst of the action.
Pop Stop asked whether her father was feeling isolated by President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) support and subsequent attacks by the "gang of three" (competing DPP presidential hopefuls Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), Yu Shyi-kun (游錫) Frank Hsieh (謝長廷)). Yes was the answer. Encouraged, Pop Stop asked what Su, rock music and hard place had in common? The dutiful daughter replied her father "cared passionately" about young people. Being such a good-looking guy, Pop Stop responded, was Su a youth idol? Actually, piped up another young rally organizer, he's not attractive but he is hard working. Honesty is the best policy, after all.
With politicians reaching out so passionately to youngsters, low-paid workers getting pay raises of up to 9.5 percent, old famers' pensions being increased, roads being mended and minor offenders being freed in an amnesty, Pop Stop has been feeling the love of late. It's a shame these things only happen when politicians want your vote in return. Normal service will, presumably, be resumed after the election.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Talking of pork, Terry Gou (郭台銘) has a claim to be Taiwan's president of porking. His trysts with actress Carina Lau (劉嘉玲) and model Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) have been tabloid fodder for months. But that's not all. The Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) chairman was formerly considered the nation's most eligible bachelor not only on account of his obscene wealth but also because he was a model husband to his wife, who sadly died of breast cancer two years ago.
Gou, however, was telling porky-pies when he said she was "the only love of my life," as he was having a steamy affair with a stock trader while he was married, according to allegations made in court. It was said Gou paid off the woman to keep quiet and even hired a hit man to silence an investigator dishing the dirt on Gou, according to the Taiwan News. Gou was reported by Apple Daily as saying, "What man doesn't play around?" Closer to the mark is the ancient saying, "A rich man loves doing bad things" (有錢男人愛搞怪). A new game on the Internet called "Go Timing" is a play on the chairman's name (Gou Tai-ming) and a piss take of his love life (see www.qwedding.com.tw).
Hu Gua (胡瓜), meanwhile, has been effusively thanking prosecutors on his blog "Hugua Paradise" (www.wretch.cc/blog/hugua) after they decided there was insufficient evidence he bribed the judge who acquitted him in his mahjong fraud case. He still has to wriggle out of a marijuana possession charge, but the smart money is on Hu getting away with it, as he appears to have the prosecutors in his pocket.
Finally, news just in, Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) got a telling off for fluffing her lines in China. The Web site www.sina.com.cn reported the diva was supposed to sing along with three fans on a TV show, but was reluctant to do so as it would make her look amateurish. "You're too good for this?" the director was reported as shouting. Eventually, Tsai bit the bullet and did as she was told.
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
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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s