This week's celebrity news features Jay Chou (周杰倫). Delayed by Typhoon Krosa at Hong Kong airport, the pop king rushed to the wedding of local singer Will Liu (劉耕宏) - most famous for being the king's buddy - to beauty queen-turned starlet Wang Wan-fei (王婉霏). He arrived at the NT$23 million ceremony, which was fully sponsored by celebrity friends and multiple businesses, at the last minute on Sunday evening.
In addition to the star-studded, attention-grabbing nuptials, the Liu-Wang union is a modern fairytale, if not plain fable. During the last four years of their eight-year relationship, the Christian convert couple claim to have stuck to a vow of chastity.
No sex for 1,460 days? It's difficult to imagine why anyone would make up such a scenario and Pop Stop would like to refrain from making any innuendos, but hopes the newlyweds enjoy their honeymoon destination, Hawaii, and the earth moves for them.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
In other Chairman Chou (周董) news, the Mando-pop star donned a cowboy outfit for his latest album Jay Chou on the Run (我很忙), and unwittingly became a rent boy. According to Chinese-language media, a Web user under the name of Jack is using Chou's photos to peddle sexual services on an English gay Web site, with a pitch line referring to a "large and uncut tool." The service fee is US$85 per hour and around US$400 a night.
That snippet of news and the cowboy look coincide with the star's recent pronouncement in an interview that if he were a woman, he would fall in love with Wang Lee-hom (王力宏), who is talented, upright and honest.
Those two would make a toothsome couple Pop Stop has to admit.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Following in the footsteps of his very "close friend" Lin Chi-ling (林志玲), Jerry Yan (言承旭) is eyeing the silver screen again. The first time around, he starred in an obscure romantic comedy Magic Kitchen (魔幻廚房). That was three years ago. Yan's reentry into the coveted movie biz is most likely to be grand and in style as the star was last week caught by paparazzi attending a dinner meeting with not one but three doyens of Hong Kong's cinema industry: Stanley Kwan (關錦鵬); Wong Kar-wai (王家衛); and William Chang (張叔平).
Gossip hounds staking out the joint caught the heartthrob off guard as he walked out of the restaurant after six hours of eating, drinking and getting acquainted with the showbiz movers and shakers. Swiftly escorted and pushed into a car by his escort/agent, Yan disappeared into the night, leaving pundits to ponder the star's next move.
Death metal brand Chthonic (閃靈) has become the nation's new pride and joy after its two-month tour of the US spreading the pro-independence message to the foreign press. Their musical and diplomatic adventure will be made into a documentary by Cheng Wen-tang (鄭文堂), which is expected to hit the international film festival circuit next year.
Currently, the outfit is busy with preparatory work before it departs again, this time to rock Europe with 30 gigs starting next month. One of the concerns raised by the band's erhu player, Su Nung (甦農), however, is not something normally expected from a heavy metal group.
After losing a great deal of money on the stock market during his absence, the artist said a major problem that needs to be solved is how he can stay in touch with his stockbroker while he's globetrotting.
Michael slides a sequin glove over the pop star’s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson’s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great. Antoine Fuqua’s movie is sanctioned by Jackson’s estate and its producers include the estate’s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film ends before the flood of allegations of sexual abuse of children, or Jackson’s own acknowledgment of sleeping alongside kids. Jackson and his estate have long maintained his innocence. In his only criminal trial, in 2005, Jackson was acquitted. Michael doesn’t even subtly nod to these facts.
The March/April volume of Foreign Affairs, long a purveyor of pro-China pablum, offered up another irksome Beijing-speak on the issues and solutions for the problems vexing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the US: “America and China at the Edge of Ruin: A Last Chance to Step Back From the Brink” rang the provocative title, by David M. Lampton and Wang Jisi (王緝思). If one ever wants to describe what went wrong with US-PRC relations, the career of Wang Jisi is a good place to start. Wang has extensive experience in the US and the West. He was a visiting
If one asks Taiwanese why house prices are so high or why the nation is so built up or why certain policies cannot be carried out, one common answer is that “Taiwan is too small.” This is actually true, though not in the way people think. The National Property Administration (NPA), responsible for tracking and managing the government’s real estate assets, maintains statistics on how much land the government owns. As of the end of last year, land for official use constituted 293,655 hectares, for public use 1,732,513 hectares, for non-public use 216,972 hectares and for state enterprises 34 hectares, yielding
The January 2028 presidential election is already stirring to life. In seven or eight months, the primary season will kick into high gear following this November’s local elections. By this point next year, we will likely know the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate and whether the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) will be fielding a candidate. Also around this time, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) will either have already completed their primary, or it will be heading into the final stretch. By next summer, the presidential race will be in high gear. The big question is who will be the KMT’s