NT$250 million. That's how much accident insurance promotion company MN Wingman (大國翼星) took out on Canto-pop crooner Eason Chan (陳奕迅) for his one-off concert at Zhongshan Soccer Stadium (中山足球場) tomorrow.
The company felt it was necessary because at Chan's last performance in Taipei, the Hong-Konger fell from a set and injured "an important area" of his body, said Kimmi Lin (林宜君), an MN Wingman spokeswoman.
Like many Canto-pop stars, Chan got his start in 1995 after participating in and winning an International New Talent Singing Competition (新秀歌唱大賽), an annual event held in Hong Kong by Television Broadcasts Limited. He signed with Capital Records and since then has fully committed himself to music.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MN WINGMAN
Unlike many of the saccharine stars discovered by Taiwanese "talent" shows, however, Chan does actually have talent. In addition to being a skilled singer and songwriter, he plays the piano, drums and guitar among other instruments.
Chan, who in 2003 won the Best Male Performer Golden Melody Award is the second non-Taiwanese singer to earn an accolade at the ceremony (the first was Jacky Cheung, 張學友). He has also won Hong Kong's Most Popular Male Singer Award for the past two years. His 2005 album, U87, was hailed by Time magazine as one of Asia's top five CDs worth buying (his most recent is Listen to Eason Chan).
Tomorrow will be the singer's first major concert in Taiwan - he's played at small venues and shared stages with other celebrities in the past - and tickets are going fast.
It's expected to be a lively performance. "He's known to move around quite a bit onstage," Lin said. "He puts on a really frenetic show and never stops moving."
Perhaps it's fitting that more insurance has been taken out on him than any other singer - he beat Sammi Cheng's (鄭秀文) previous record of NT$200 million, which was set seven years ago.
The depressing numbers continue to pile up, like casualty lists after a lost battle. This week, after the government announced the 19th straight month of population decline, the Ministry of the Interior said that Taiwan is expected to lose 6.67 million workers in two waves of retirement over the next 15 years. According to the Ministry of Labor (MOL), Taiwan has a workforce of 11.6 million (as of July). The over-15 population was 20.244 million last year. EARLY RETIREMENT Early retirement is going to make these waves a tsunami. According to the Directorate General of Budget Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), the
Last week the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) announced that the legislature would again amend the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) to separate fiscal allocations for the three outlying counties of Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu from the 19 municipalities on Taiwan proper. The revisions to the act to redistribute the national tax revenues were passed in December last year. Prior to the new law, the central government received 75 percent of tax revenues, while the local governments took 25 percent. The revisions gave the central government 60 percent, and boosted the local government share to 40 percent,
Many will be surprised to discover that the electoral voting numbers in recent elections do not entirely line up with what the actual voting results show. Swing voters decide elections, but in recent elections, the results offer a different and surprisingly consistent message. And there is one overarching theme: a very democratic preference for balance. SOME CAVEATS Putting a number on the number of swing voters is surprisingly slippery. Because swing voters favor different parties depending on the type of election, it is hard to separate die-hard voters leaning towards one party or the other. Complicating matters is that some voters are
Sept 22 to Sept 28 Hsu Hsih (許石) never forgot the international student gathering he attended in Japan, where participants were asked to sing a folk song from their homeland. When it came to the Taiwanese students, they looked at each other, unable to recall a single tune. Taiwan doesn’t have folk songs, they said. Their classmates were incredulous: “How can that be? How can a place have no folk songs?” The experience deeply embarrassed Hsu, who was studying music. After returning to Taiwan in 1946, he set out to collect the island’s forgotten tunes, from Hoklo (Taiwanese) epics to operatic
RSS