Life is not all wine and roses for the beautiful people of Taipei's entertainment industry, but they are at least able to find some compensation. Penny Lin (林韋君), the B-movie actress and TV host notorious for her amorous adventures, has decided that a couple of months with pop star David Tao (陶?) is about all a girl can bear, and has moved on to pastures new. Next magazine has had a crew of paparazzi following the couple's every move, and have captured Lin possibly holding hands with an as yet unnamed young man. What is the world coming to? She quickly pulled away when she caught sight of the media crew, as clear an indication as the local rags need to launch into a frenzy of speculation.
Tao, to make sure that nobody suspects that he is without someone to keep him warm at night, has been captured on camera with Liz Yang (楊俐思), a model. Penny and David are "still friends," and seem to be content to go slumming it with relative unknowns for the time being.
In other news from the runway, Sonia Sui (隋棠) is emerging as a rival to the ubiquitous Lin Chi-ling (林志玲), but in the process is putting old "friends" behind her. Local fashion godfather Ivan Hong's (洪偉明) agency Catwalk (凱渥) has put the deep freeze on Sui after she expressed reservations about the commission the company was taking on her work; a repeat of the situation when Lin left the agency. The agency is now putting its weight behind the emerging new talent Bianca Pai (白歆惠), who got her big break when she took up the slack after a fall from a horse put Lin out of action for some months back in 2005. There is no love lost in the modeling industry, that's for sure.
Local media have also been getting seriously uptight about whether Tony Leung (梁朝偉) actually and for real got it on with Tang Wei (湯唯) during the filming of Ang Lee's (李安) Lust, Caution (色,戒). Leung's on-again off-again girlfriend Carina Lau (劉嘉玲) is said to have been seriously upset after seeing the film with friends (revealed in leaks to the media by said friends). There has been considerable anatomical speculation at whether some of the acrobatics that in Ang Lee's world pass for sex could actually have permitted penetration of any sort, and if so, could this really be considered an act of betrayal to Lau (herself no stranger to male admiration)? Perhaps it was simply the brio with which Leung seemed to be entering into his part that surprised Lau.
In the most recent development, Lau has come out publicly to say that she knew all about the sexy bits in Lust, Caution even before shooting began. She is now taking the moral high ground and is now lauding Leung as a "great actor," for the sacrifice he has made for his art.
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
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
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