Chinese New Year is quickly approaching, and it's time to contemplate the auspiciousness of the year ahead. Pop Stop, however, is unashamedly more concerned with "wardrobe malfunctions" and the fate of booze-addled celebrities.
But first, One Million Star "talent" show celebrity Aska Yang (楊宗緯) was reportedly paid a total of NT$1 million for crooning at Foxconn Technology Group (鴻海科技集團) and Fubon Financial Holding Co's (富邦金控) year-end parties, or weiya (尾牙).
In other Yang news, ET Today reports that Gary Tsao (曹格) said his work over the past two years has been meaningless because Yang is getting all the attention for the songs Tsao has written. And we thought Yang was king of the crybabies. In response, Yang, in a burst of humility that is all too rare amongst Taiwan's celebrities, publicly admitted to respecting Tsao and went so far as to call the Singaporean crooner and tell him so.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Meanwhile, Vivi Wang's (王婉霏) "black forest incident" and Liu Zhen's (劉真) costume malfunction seem to be paying off. The China Times reported that both models were hired for weiya gigs, with Wang reportedly receiving NT$80,000 for the evening. The NT$50,000 fee Wang reputedly charged for the car promotion that included the special viewing leaves Pop Stop wondering what you get for NT$80,000.
Taiwan's authorities are at it again. Earlier in the week, this paper reported that the Taichung County Bureau of Health is in negotiations with Akane Nagase, a Japanese porn star, to help promote condom use. After hearing the news, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Yang Li-huan (楊麗環) angrily asked, "What is the message that the bureau is trying to spread?" Well, Pop Stop suspects the message the bureau is trying to spread is that businessmen who keep mistresses or visit prostitutes abroad, contract diseases and then return to Taiwan and share them with their wives should realize they have more than just themselves to protect.
Shu Qi (舒淇), the Taiwanese "ex-porn star" as the Mirror newspaper repeatedly reminded readers when it falsely reported that she was sexing it up in a trendy London sushi joint with British bad boy Hugh Grant and his friend John Duigan, has had her reputation restored. Though the gossip rag printed a retraction of the story and an apology, bloggers were miffed that Rupert Murdoch's "red top" kept the "ex-porn star" tag and failed to edify its readers of Shu's sterling acting career over the past 10 years.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
David Tao's (陶吉吉) drunken exploits last week might land him in jail. The Liberty Times (自由時報) (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper) reported that the sauced singer allegedly assaulted the younger sister of one of his many ex-girlfriends. Pop Stop suspects that the lawsuit, if it comes to pass, could be enough to sober Tao up. Not.
Finally, it looks as though Terri Kwan (關穎), daughter of Jih Sun Group (日盛集團) chairman Chen Kuo-he (陳國和) has dropped sexy models and rich businessmen for that old Taiwanese favorite: gangsters. At least the son of one. An intrepid Apple paparazzo caught Kwan and Chen Chu-he (陳楚河), son of the recently deceased Bamboo Union godfather Chen Chi-li (陳啟禮), together on film. Though the sometime actress vehemently denied that anything was going on, capturing the two together is the kind of tattle that will keep the rumor mill grinding far into the next year.
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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