Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) seems to have unwittingly educated Hong Kong's glitterati on personal hygiene and public etiquette. The Apple Daily earlier this week published images of Hong Kong diva and actress Coco Chiang (蔣怡) with her finger up her nose having a good rout at a shopping mall.
Pop Stop readers will recall Tu kicked up a stink when he was "caught" picking his nose and sleeping during a legislative session. Government Information Office (GIO) Minister Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) later claimed Tu's nasal fingering was a protest to poor behavior in the legislature. Hmmm.
At least Chiang wasn't sleeping on the job.
In other Hong Kong showbiz news, Maggie Cheung (張曼玉) reportedly can't get enough of European men. The Cannes Film Festival award-winning actress, who was once married to French director Olivier Assayas, spent five days shacked up in a hotel with a German mystery man. Calling their relationship "love at first sight," the actress seems to have moved on from her other failed love affairs.
Meanwhile, at home, before Taiwanese bombshell Lin Chih-ling (林志玲) came along, there was Stephanie Hsiao (蕭薔). Once described as the prettiest "artist" - whatever that means - in Taiwan, Hsiao has struggled to get back on top of the celebrity pedestal, though she still has considerable drawing power for gossip hounds.
A Chinese blog last week showed images of Hsiao being "forced" to drink at a KTV in China. The shots momentarily shattered the philanthropic image that Hisao had cultivated with stunts such as selling 100 autographed pictures of herself to raise money for wigs to give to chemotherapy patients. The model maintained her good-girl image by telling the media that she couldn't have been forced to drink because children were present.
Suzanne Hsiao (蕭淑慎) is back on the celebrity circuit. Well, sort of. Having recently left a rehabilitation center after testing positive last year for ketamine and cocaine, which she claimed originated from augmentation surgery, the singer's attempted comeback - this time on the big screen - isn't making much headway.
Apple reports that Hsiao agreed to star in a movie in which she removed her clothes for a cool NT$800,000. At the time the straight-to-DVD director Wong Jing (王晶) said the shamed starlet's talent could make her Taiwan's next sex queen. Offers for more movies have dried up, however, as the burgeoning actress' bedroom performance has been likened to that of a dead fish (死魚).
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is
What does the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in the Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) era stand for? What sets it apart from their allies, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)? With some shifts in tone and emphasis, the KMT’s stances have not changed significantly since the late 2000s and the era of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) current platform formed in the mid-2010s under the guidance of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), and current President William Lai (賴清德) campaigned on continuity. Though their ideological stances may be a bit stale, they have the advantage of being broadly understood by the voters.
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