It is amazing to see how the entertainment apparatus turns a nobody into a star and its efficiency to produce, consume and cash in on its creations is flabbergasting. Right now the machine is working its magic on Aska Yang (楊宗緯), its latest product. A local version of China's Li Yuchun (李宇春), Yang rocketed to stardom after participating in the singing contest One Million Star (超級星光大道), on national TV. Two months on, the college student-turned-household name keeps the nation enthralled with no more than a reasonably nice voice and a bent for getting teary eyed over defeated contenders.
Nicknamed cry baby for his tears and caveman for his rugged appearance, Yang has quickly become the gossip rag's new favorite as paparazzi digs out dirt saying the contestant once flunked out of college, subtracted five years from his real age and has developed a predilection for young, pretty assistants.
The show has been accused of deliberately eliminating Yang from the competition so that it can invite him back later in the game, adding a bit of suspense and drama to the show even as the star in the making ensures that gossip fodder is in ample supply.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
The Aska craze is predicted to reach a climax in a couple of months as Yang and the nine other finalists, now dubbed as the Million Star Gang (星光幫), are working on their first compilation album slated to hit the market in the summer. Whether or not the gang are successful products like Hello Kitty or Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), only time will tell.
In other tabloid news, A-mei (阿妹) is said to have developed a fancy for younger men as a widely circulated picture of her nestling up to Super Basketball League player He Shou-cheng (何守正) is interpreted as a sign of budding love by local media proficient in making gossip headlines out of nothing.
As the rumored romance comes suspiciously close to the release date of the star's new album next month, and one cannot but wonder whether the record company is getting a bit slack in resorting to a publicity gimmick that is so yesterday.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Pop singer and entertainer Alan Luo (羅志祥) is apparently in the prime of his life. Not only does his romantic pursuit of the queen of cute Rainie Yang (楊丞琳) look promising, the business-savvy star has set up his own clothing brand and his first flagship store opened last weekend in Ximending (西門町).
Over 600 fans flooded into the store to pick up Luo's designs of limited edition clothing and plastic toys. And by the end of the day, the astute star took more than NT$1 million of bucks for what are in fact plain T-shirts and trinkets.
Meanwhile, Luo's past rumored girlfriend Jolin Tsai is spending the same amount of cash on the other side of the planet. Picking up pricey lessons from Kylie Monogue's dance instructor in London, the dance diva's studiousness has been faithfully documented by the record company, lauding the star as a studious young lady who can lead a ordinary life like other Taiwanese students do despite her fame and wealth.
Pop Stop just wants to point out one thing: expensive dance lessons, extravagant shopping and five-star hotel accommodation can hardly constitute a common experience shared by Taiwanese students in foreign countries.
The breakwater stretches out to sea from the sprawling Kaohsiung port in southern Taiwan. Normally, it’s crowded with massive tankers ferrying liquefied natural gas from Qatar to be stored in the bulbous white tanks that dot the shoreline. These are not normal times, though, and not a single shipment from Qatar has docked at the Yongan terminal since early March after the Strait of Hormuz was shuttered. The suspension has provided a realistic preview of a potential Chinese blockade, a move that would throttle an economy anchored by the world’s most advanced and power-hungry semiconductor industry. It is a stark reminder of
May 11 to May 17 Traversing the southern slopes of the Yushan Range in 1931, Japanese naturalist Tadao Kano knew he was approaching the last swath of Taiwan still beyond colonial control. The “vast, unknown territory,” protected by the “fierce” Bunun headman Dahu Ali, was “filled with an utterly endless jungle that choked the mountains and valleys,” Kano wrote. He noted how the group had “refused to submit to the measures of our authorities and entrenched themselves deep in these mountains … living a free existence spent chasing deer in the morning and seeking serow in the evening,” even describing them as
As a different column was being written, the big news dropped that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) announced that negotiations within his caucus, with legislative speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT, party Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chair Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) had produced a compromise special military budget proposal. On Thursday morning, prior to meeting with Cheng over a lunch of beef noodles, Lu reiterated her support for a budget of NT$800 or NT$900 billion — but refused to comment after the meeting. Right after Fu’s
What government project has expropriated the most land in Taiwan? According to local media reports, it is the Taoyuan Aerotropolis, eating 2,500 hectares of land in its first phase, with more to come. Forty thousand people are expected to be displaced by the project. Naturally that enormous land grab is generating powerful pushback. Last week Chen Chien-ho (陳健和), a local resident of Jhuwei Borough (竹圍) in Taoyuan City’s Dayuan District (大園) filed a petition for constitutional review of the project after losing his case at the Taipei Administrative Court. The Administrative Court found in favor of nine other local landowners, but
RSS