Edison Chen (陳冠希) has left the building, but the storm he has stirred up is likely to rage a while longer. After all, it's all grist to the media mill. Next magazine plumbed new depths this week with its feature story on one of the hookers who reportedly provided services for the former Canto-crooner.
Besides the stars who were involved in the sex photo scandal and the others rumored to feature in the unreleased photos confiscated by police, old friend and staunch supporter, Shu Qi (舒淇), has been tainted by association.
A series of T-shirts released by Original Fake in association with Clot depicts the ex-sex kitten in lace knickers with garters and a backless nurse costume. On another shirt she is portrayed getting intimate with a cartoon sperm. Internet gossipmongers have been quick to spot similarities in the provocative pose with those in the photos taken from Chen's computer. The fact that Shu has been a staunch supporter of Chen even after the scandal broke has only lent fuel to the fire. Then again, Shu's sex life has hardly been a closely guarded secret, so even though she has now given up her vampish ways and is a bad girl gone good, the whole business of being seen getting naked on camera must just seem so last year.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
In other news, the first celebrity feud stemming from CTV's One Million Star (超級星光大道) pop idol reality show is about to begin. Jam Xiao (蕭敬騰) and Aska Yang (楊宗緯), who managed to manipulate press hype surrounding his disqualification into stardom, are going at it. Though Xiao defeated Yang during the first season of the show, both have been signed to Warner, but Yang once again seems to have gotten the short end of the stick. Jam is in the hands of Chen Tse-shan (陳澤杉), the celebrated music impressario who the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister paper) says will return to Warner Music in May, after two-and-a-half years as director of EMI. Chen, who is rumored to be taking many high-powered EMI artists with him, has procured for Xiao a lucrative eight-figure deal which includes all of Warner's international marketing muscle. Yang, whose recently released album Dove (鴿子) hit number one on the G-Music charts this week, is hardly complaining, but according to Next magazine, the fact that he is being handled by showbiz entrepreneur Hsu An-chin (許安進) means that Warner will view him as an "outsider," denying him the perks of their own house artists.
Yang has further competition from Lin You-jia (林宥嘉), who won the first season of One Million Star. Yang will be holding his first major concert on May 17, and is likely to be compared with Lin, who will start an nationwide tour on May 24 following the release of his first album. A report in the United Daily News (UDN) says that tickets are already selling well and that he is likely to perform before 12,000 people.
A-Mei (張惠妹) is over 20 and has wowed stadiums seating thousands, but "the light of Taiwan" (台灣之光), as she is described in a UDN report, is suffering from sleepless nights as she prepares to take the stage in a Japanese production of Turandot. She is currently in Tokyo working day and night on this unconventional role. UDN quoted A-Mei as saying that she is so nervous that she has broken out in pimples, but at least she doesn't have the pressure of being a superstar over there. "It's like when I was a student in Boston," she said. "Nobody knows me here, so there isn't the pressure of being A-Mei."
June 9 to June 15 A photo of two men riding trendy high-wheel Penny-Farthing bicycles past a Qing Dynasty gate aptly captures the essence of Taipei in 1897 — a newly colonized city on the cusp of great change. The Japanese began making significant modifications to the cityscape in 1899, tearing down Qing-era structures, widening boulevards and installing Western-style infrastructure and buildings. The photographer, Minosuke Imamura, only spent a year in Taiwan as a cartographer for the governor-general’s office, but he left behind a treasure trove of 130 images showing life at the onset of Japanese rule, spanning July 1897 to
In an interview posted online by United Daily News (UDN) on May 26, current Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) was asked about Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) replacing him as party chair. Though not yet officially running, by the customs of Taiwan politics, Lu has been signalling she is both running for party chair and to be the party’s 2028 presidential candidate. She told an international media outlet that she was considering a run. She also gave a speech in Keelung on national priorities and foreign affairs. For details, see the May 23 edition of this column,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
At Computex 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) urged the government to subsidize AI. “All schools in Taiwan must integrate AI into their curricula,” he declared. A few months earlier, he said, “If I were a student today, I’d immediately start using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini Pro and Grok to learn, write and accelerate my thinking.” Huang sees the AI-bullet train leaving the station. And as one of its drivers, he’s worried about youth not getting on board — bad for their careers, and bad for his workforce. As a semiconductor supply-chain powerhouse and AI hub wannabe, Taiwan is seeing
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