The wave of police raids and accusations of drug use continued this past week with Little Pan-pan (小潘潘) holding a press conference to rebut a report in the United Daily News that her phone number was found on the mobile phone of an associate of alleged drug kingpin Wang Feng-yu (王豐裕).
"First, I don't use drugs," she said at the press conference. "Secondly, I don't know any of Wang Feng-yu's associates." As Little Pan-pan has a sterling reputation of discretion, Pop Stop fully accepts her explanation. Not.
Meanwhile, Suzanne Hsiao (蕭淑慎), Taiwan's answer to Amy Winehouse, gave an exclusive interview to the Apple Daily in which she denied having a drug problem. Her interview came in response to the recent discovery by police of 30.4g of cocaine and 2g of ketamine in her rented apartment.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
"I'm not a druggie," she said in an article featuring images of her wrist complete with marks suggestive of suicide attempts. "I don't have an addiction. I just wanted to have fun on my birthday and didn't know I would get busted." Unsurprisingly, Hsiao vowed to stay on the straight and narrow. Curiously, there was no talk of entering a rehabilitation center, as she has to wait for public prosecutors to decide her fate.
In other drug-related news, Pei Lin (裴琳) might have bawled in front of the camera in an attempt to salvage her career after admitting to smoking pot, but she is getting kudos from the blogosphere for her portrayal of a lesbian in a music video, supposedly a first for Taiwan. In two scenes, the music video features Lin in a passionate embrace with singer Olivia Yan (閻韋伶), who just released an album called Silly Child (傻孩子).
Malaysian pop singer Gary Tsao (曹格) was reportedly "caught" in a gay bar. Again. Tsao seems to like hanging out at gay bars - mainly, it's rumored, because the gay community loves his sappy songs. But Pop Stop speculates that Tsao is frequenting gay bars to overcome his sorrow that the moderately talented Aska Yang (楊宗緯) does a better job of crooning his songs.
PHOTO: LIBERTY TIMES
Finally, expect Ada Pan (潘慧如) to call a press conference in the next few days to bolster her reputation as a good girl. The recent issue of Next published an expose of the variety show hostess, going into details about her work as a hostess. Next added Pan to a list of starlets and models who allegedly hostess, including Little Dragon Girl (小龍女), who published a steamy nude picture book, and Taiwanese/Japanese porn star Hinano Miduki (觀月雛乃), who managed to win back her wayward boyfriend with a Chinese medicine potion that she said tightens the va-jay-jay. The list, incidentally, also includes Suzanne Hsiao - who lost her contract to Pan after her first drugs bust.
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