Taiwan's film industry is in mourning this week for Edward Yang (楊德昌), a leading figure of Taiwan New Wave cinema who died of colon cancer at the age of 59 last Friday. Completing only eight films in his 18-year-long career, Yang became the country's first filmmaker to win the Cannes best director award in 2000 for Yi Yi (一一), his last work, which has yet to be commercially released in his homeland. The withdrawal of this film for local release was said to be a proud gesture of protest from the idiosyncratic director to express his grave disappointment with the local film environment as a whole.
The doyen of the Taiwan New Wave, Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢), mourned Yang's passing as an end of an era and said that his old friend had never let on about his illness. Director turned glass art entrepreneur Chang Yi (張毅) remarked that his old comrade's passion for film was such that when he visited Yang 10 days before his death in Beverly Hills, the terminally ill director was still working feverishly on an animation project titled Little Kid (小朋友).
During the last years of his life, Yang had put much time and effort into the ambitious feature-length animation film project The Wind (追風) in collaboration with Jackie Chan (成龍). Costing over NT$200 million for a ten-minute long passage, the project was eventually aborted and what is said to be Yang's animation dream since junior high school remains an unfinished vision.
In local celebrity news, the wedding of Super Basketball League team Dacin Tiger's (達欣) coach Liu Jia-fa (劉嘉發) and Chien I-chun (錢依淳) from Eelin (伊林) modeling agency held last Saturday saw a night of celebration which brought together the city's most beautiful people, as long-legged models and young, virile athletes strutted on the red carpet led by man-magnet Yvonne Yao (姚采穎) and teenybopper idol Tien Lei (田壘).
Though the coach instructed his players not to flirt with the belles and ask for their phone numbers in order to "protect the players' non-model girlfriends," the hormone-charged party nevertheless saw intoxicated singles pairing up and getting cozy with each other. According to eyewitnesses, the tension on the outfield was said to be extremely high as the beautiful crowd's significant others all stayed alert to every sound and movement to keep possible competitors at bay.
While her fellow models celebrated the union between man and woman, Janel Tsai (蔡淑臻) was spotted cruising last Saturday with her lesbian roommate known as Nico. Though insisting that she likes men, she didn't deny press speculation on her feelings for the tomboy in question.
"Nico is my life and I will be lost without her," Tsai was quoted as saying. A profession of lesbian love, a dating game to fill in the single period, or a crafty tactic to make it to the gossip headlines? Stay tuned for more updates.
It has been a while since Taiwan's IT tycoon Terry Gou (郭台銘) made his pursuit for a future partner a source of public entertainment. Yet, according to gossip insiders, the big boss will strike again and employ his charm and money to woo Hong Kong actress Rosamund Kwan (關之琳). The two are said to have scheduled a date in Beijing over Christmas.
A glimpse into the life of a super rich entrepreneur: Does being a super rich tycoon mean you have to set up dates five months in advance, or is Kwan playing hard to get?
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
By far the most jarring of the new appointments for the incoming administration is that of Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) to head the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF). That is a huge demotion for one of the most powerful figures in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Tseng has one of the most impressive resumes in the party. He was very active during the Wild Lily Movement and his generation is now the one taking power. He has served in many of the requisite government, party and elected positions to build out a solid political profile. Elected as mayor of Taoyuan as part of the
Moritz Mieg, 22, lay face down in the rubble, the ground shaking violently beneath him. Boulders crashed down around him, some stones hitting his back. “I just hoped that it would be one big hit and over, because I did not want to be hit nearly to death and then have to slowly die,” the student from Germany tells Taipei Times. MORNING WALK Early on April 3, Mieg set out on a scenic hike through Taroko Gorge in Hualien County (花蓮). It was a fine day for it. Little did he know that the complex intersection of tectonic plates Taiwan sits
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50