Eat your hearts out Wayne Rooney and Coleen McLoughlin — timeless beauty Carina Lau (劉嘉玲) and perennial heartthrob Tony Leung Chiu Wai (梁朝偉) will reportedly tie the knot in a lavish bash after a 19-year romance that has included rumored flings with a cast of celebrity paramours by both parties.
The nuptials, to which 50 close friends and relatives have been invited, will reportedly take place on July 21 at the Four Seasons resort in Bali.
The showbiz media went into overdrive to uncover details of what is expected to be an extravagant affair. In a press conference held to publicize The Battle of Red Cliff (赤壁) in Hong Kong on Monday, Leung deflected questions about the couple’s big day.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Frustrated, the press took matters into their own hands.
According to unsubstantiated rumors, Lau and Leung will splurge an estimated NT$4 million on flying out and housing wedding guests who include Faye Wong (王菲), Stanley Kwan (關錦鵬) and Wong Kar-wai (王家衛). The Four Seasons is bound to be besieged by paparazzi, and Pop Stop is offering good odds on Lau becoming pregnant within the year.
In other marital news, it looks as though Lau’s former suitor Terry Gou (郭台銘) doesn’t want his past date hogging the limelight. The head of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and his dancer girlfriend Delia Tseng’s (曾馨瑩) wedding is reportedly taking place later this month and has been picked over in minute detail over the past couple of weeks.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
A simple snap shot of Tseng at the airport sparked an in-depth analysis of her jewelry and clothing. Expert fashionistas determined that her sunglasses were Gucci (NT$10,000), her handbag Hermes (NT$190,000) and her ring diamond (NT$77 million). The Apple Daily’s verdict: the real-life “Pretty Woman” is starting to look like Mrs Gou-to-be.
Meanwhile, pop diva A-mei (張惠妹) was caught off guard, looks-wise, while she was practicing Cantonese last week for her performance at the upcoming Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎). A blown-up photo in Apple Daily showed the makeup-less diva sporting a pair of retro glasses with black plastic frame and compared the singer’s look to Mike Myer’s Austin Powers character.
The newspaper charmingly suggested that A-mei didn’t look her best because her boyfriend, basketball player Sam Ho(何守正), 11 years her junior, had worn her out.
But for truly desperate, unsourced rumor-mongering, one has to turn to China’s celebrity newshounds. A dark, obscure snapshot of pop idol Matthew Ming Dao (明道) relaxing by resting his feet on the back of a chair while a nearby female assistant is seen hunched forward was said by Southern Metropolis Weekly to be evidence that the star is a kinky podophiliac who likes nothing better than to have his feet licked.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
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