Last week Carina Lau (劉嘉玲) and Tony Leung Chiu Wai (梁朝偉) exchanged marriage vows in Bhutan. A wedding on the following day, which one might have expected to upstage an event taking place thousands of kilometers away, didn’t. Terry Gou’s (郭台銘) marriage to dancer Delia Tseng (曾馨瑩) managed to totally underwhelm the media. Perhaps that was intentional, for the event at the Grand Hyatt Taipei was billed as “environmentally friendly and of the common people.” It may come as something of a surprise to Gou to learn that most people don’t spend upwards of NT$20 million on their wedding, but compared to the NT$220 million that the Lau-Leung nuptials cost, it is, as they say, small potatoes.
Unfortunately, Gou simply comes across as being a tad cheap, which reflects badly on him after his unsuccessful pursuit of A-listers like Lau. But the most notable aspect of Gou’s wedding was not the guests, who included local celebrities Chang Fei (張菲), Chang Hsiao-yen (張小燕) and Kevin Tsai (蔡康永), but those who were not invited. First among the omissions was supermodel and former Gou inamorata Lin Chih-lin (林志玲), who is regarded by many as the matchmaker behind the Tel and Delia pairing. Gou, it seems, does not like to be reminded of his failures — another mark against someone who tries to come across as debonair.
And all may not be rosy in the house of Gou. The tycoon’s younger brother Gou Tai-chiang (郭台強) missed his sibling’s wedding, preferring to holiday in Kyoto instead.
Meanwhile, Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) is without a clearly designated “friend,” and, according to her favorite fortune-teller, this has everything to do with the color of her hair, Next Magazine reports. Tsai’s tresses recently went from brown to black, and while this hasn’t done anything for her love life, it may, or may not, have helped bag her a lucrative contract for promoting hair care products, reportedly worth NT$24 million.
Lower down on the celebrity food chain, model Song Hsin-ni (宋新妮) has found that the most effective way of moving from page to screen is to get her kit off, and has achieved a victory of sorts in squeezing out rival Lee Yan-jin (李妍瑾) as the celebrity spokesperson for Ankh Clinic Beauty Therapy (安蔻美容醫學中心), where she had become a regular client.
Still further down the food chain, Sung Chien-chang (宋健彰), better known as band Nanchuan Mama’s (南拳媽媽) Tantou (彈頭), may be faced with a shotgun wedding as girlfriend Pipi (皮皮) has, reportedly, got a little Tantou in her tummy. The pretty boy’s rather short career as a man about town seems to be drawing rapidly to a close.
And so as Pop Stop bottoms out, the only way to go is up. Well, perhaps not. Jam Hsiao (蕭敬騰), whose self-titled debut album remains unremittingly at the top of the music charts despite no evidence of originality or talent, is hereby formally admitted into Pop Stop’s Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame after he was charged with burning a piano in a conservation area. Alas, this is no Jimi Hendrix at the Monterrey Pop Festival during the Summer of Love, and without any regard for the saccharine music video that resulted from this publicity stunt, the Taichung County Environmental Protection Agency slapped a NT$100,000 fine on Hsiao’s production company for, first and foremost, transporting the piano to the Kaomei Wildlife Conservation Area (高美野生動物保護區) and, quite literally, frightening the animals, and then for burning it in an area in which fires are prohibited.
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
April 28 to May 4 During the Japanese colonial era, a city’s “first” high school typically served Japanese students, while Taiwanese attended the “second” high school. Only in Taichung was this reversed. That’s because when Taichung First High School opened its doors on May 1, 1915 to serve Taiwanese students who were previously barred from secondary education, it was the only high school in town. Former principal Hideo Azukisawa threatened to quit when the government in 1922 attempted to transfer the “first” designation to a new local high school for Japanese students, leading to this unusual situation. Prior to the Taichung First
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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