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.
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
May 18 to May 24 Pastor Yang Hsu’s (楊煦) congregation was shocked upon seeing the land he chose to build his orphanage. It was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the only way to access it was to cross a river by foot. The soil was poor due to runoff, and large rocks strewn across the plot prevented much from growing. In addition, there was no running water or electricity. But it was all Yang could afford. He and his Indigenous Atayal wife Lin Feng-ying (林鳳英) had already been caring for 24 orphans in their home, and they were in
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
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