While Jay Chou (周杰倫) basked in the music industry limelight with a batch of nominations and gongs at the 19th Golden Melody Awards (第十 九屆金曲獎) on Saturday, his former girlfriend and rival, Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), has hit the skids.
She failed to receive one nomination in any major award category, despite the critical success of her Special Agent J (特務J) album, which was released in September of last year, and she was the subject of an all points bulletin issued by the fashion police for turning up to the awards ceremony in a NT$200,000 dress by Giambattista Valli, in which, according to Chen Wan-ruo (陳婉若), the former general manager of the Eelin (伊林) modeling agency, she looked like a barbeque-ready squid on a stick.
Worse still, her new album, Etude of Love (愛的練習曲), which was scheduled for a February release, is being held up by EMI for reasons unknown, and this has cost her, according to Next Magazine (壹周刊), an estimated NT$20 million in lost earnings.
The diva’s romantic life lies in tatters, after her mother and former beau Eddie Peng’s (彭于晏) manager put the kibosh on the pair’s blossoming relationship.
But, despite past bad blood, it looks as though Tsai is finding moral support from old boyfriend Chou, who is encouraging her to follow his example and start her own production company. The pair got into some tit-for-tat sniping over the sales figures for Special Agent J late last year, with Chou claiming they had been inflated, and that his own album, On the Run (我很忙), released at the same time, had really outsold Tsai’s.
Tsai’s good friend Little S (小S) is having no trouble getting satisfaction, or so it seems from reports received from sources, who revealed to Next Magazine that the mom-of-two and TV show hostess is a frequent visitor to her neighborhood sex shop.
She strongly recommends the Ribbed Bullet, to many of her friends, reportedly, although she has yet, as far as Pop Stop is aware, failed to, publicly, er, plug the product on her show. The device, according to the packaging, makes use of “HS III” technology that “allows you to choose vibration speeds and thrilling motions to create pure ecstasy.” This is probably not something that Peng could do, even on a good day, so Pop Stop would advise Tsai to follow her friend’s advice, although in the interests of full disclosure, Pop Stop cannot vouch for the product’s claims.
While Tsai may be fretting over the millions of dollars she is losing because of EMI’s prevarication, Chang Yun-ching (張芸京), the winner of SetTV’s talent show Super Idol (超級偶像) is pulling her hair out over the cash that has reportedly been skimmed off her income by her agents, which has left her without enough even to pay the rent on her NT$5,000-a-month room.
Next Magazine reports she has yet to receive her prize money, and her agents are netting 60 percent of all her other earnings, leaving the former graphic designer with little more take-home pay than she had received from her office job. For all the smiles, it’s a tough world out there in showbiz land, and wannabe celebrities need to hone their survival skills to make it through the snake pit of corporate interests behind the cameras, just as they need to impress the judges in front of them.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
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Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
The Ministry of Education last month proposed a nationwide ban on mobile devices in schools, aiming to curb concerns over student phone addiction. Under the revised regulation, which will take effect in August, teachers and schools will be required to collect mobile devices — including phones, laptops and wearables devices — for safekeeping during school hours, unless they are being used for educational purposes. For Chang Fong-ching (張鳳琴), the ban will have a positive impact. “It’s a good move,” says the professor in the department of
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