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."
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Perched on Thailand’s border with Myanmar, Arunothai is a dusty crossroads town, a nowheresville that could be the setting of some Southeast Asian spaghetti Western. Its main street is the final, dead-end section of the two-lane highway from Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city 120kms south, and the heart of the kingdom’s mountainous north. At the town boundary, a Chinese-style arch capped with dragons also bears Thai script declaring fealty to Bangkok’s royal family: “Long live the King!” Further on, Chinese lanterns line the main street, and on the hillsides, courtyard homes sit among warrens of narrow, winding alleyways and
RSS