It’s been how many months since Edison Chen’s (陳冠希) said he would leave the Hong Kong entertainment industry forever? That was in February, and there are already rumors that he is angling for a ticket back. According to a report on Sina.com (新浪網), director Andrew Lau (劉偉強)of Infernal Affairs (無間道) fame might be prevailed upon to give the lad a helping hand. The two developed a friendship during the making of Lau’s groundbreaking trilogy. Interest in Chen spiked slightly after he appeared in the Batman blockbuster The Dark Knight, albeit for just two seconds, but do we really want him back so soon? Watch this space.
Taiwan’s favorite supermodel Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) showed her quality on Wednesday when attending Catwalk’s (凱渥) 2nd Star of Your Dreams (第二屆凱渥夢幻之星) modeling competition. (Catwalk is Taiwan’s most influential modeling agency.) And Apple Daily showed its quality yesterday by using the lead paragraph of its story on this event to note that Lin sports a cup size of 34C and that she was wearing a NT$9,810,000 necklace. Loosely translated, the headline yesterday read “Massive tits overawe aspiring models.” You can always be sure Apple Daily will give you the key points at a glace.
But back on the subject of Lin, she has shown that she can take the rough with the smooth. News that her gig as the host of CCTV’s Mid-Autumn Festival variety show had been nixed broke earlier this week, but local media angling for a big response were disappointed. Speculation abounds that this last-minute casting change is the result of Lin’s father expressing himself rather too freely in support of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). Lin played it cool, taking the responsibility onto herself, saying that she had been too busy to prepare for the task sufficiently well, and that she hoped that in future she’d have another chance to host the program. End of story. Then again, perhaps she was simply embodying the philosophy with which she encouraged the competition’s participants: “The job of a model is to make everybody happy,” she said in her speech to the competitors. Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell may beg to differ.
The skies above Taiwan may not be safe for very much longer. Variety host Zhang Fei (張菲) has taken up flying. He has just spent NT$5 million on purchasing a light aircraft of his own, but has been practicing using a friend’s. Having clocked up a grand total of 25 hours of flying time, he has told the media that he now aims to start a flying school. And Pop Stop thought the streets of Taipei were dangerous. According to the Apple Daily, he has already been in touch with the Civil Aeronautics Administration to establish better regulations for recreational flying in Taiwan.
When asked why he had taken up flying, the debonair show host quipped: “It’s the only way to keep above Taiwan’s plummeting share market.”
June 9 to June 15 A photo of two men riding trendy high-wheel Penny-Farthing bicycles past a Qing Dynasty gate aptly captures the essence of Taipei in 1897 — a newly colonized city on the cusp of great change. The Japanese began making significant modifications to the cityscape in 1899, tearing down Qing-era structures, widening boulevards and installing Western-style infrastructure and buildings. The photographer, Minosuke Imamura, only spent a year in Taiwan as a cartographer for the governor-general’s office, but he left behind a treasure trove of 130 images showing life at the onset of Japanese rule, spanning July 1897 to
One of the most important gripes that Taiwanese have about the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is that it has failed to deliver concretely on higher wages, housing prices and other bread-and-butter issues. The parallel complaint is that the DPP cares only about glamor issues, such as removing markers of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) colonialism by renaming them, or what the KMT codes as “de-Sinification.” Once again, as a critical election looms, the DPP is presenting evidence for that charge. The KMT was quick to jump on the recent proposal of the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) to rename roads that symbolize
In an interview posted online by United Daily News (UDN) on May 26, current Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) was asked about Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) replacing him as party chair. Though not yet officially running, by the customs of Taiwan politics, Lu has been signalling she is both running for party chair and to be the party’s 2028 presidential candidate. She told an international media outlet that she was considering a run. She also gave a speech in Keelung on national priorities and foreign affairs. For details, see the May 23 edition of this column,
On the evening of June 1, Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) apologized and resigned in disgrace. His crime was instructing his driver to use a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon. The Control Yuan is the government branch that investigates, audits and impeaches government officials for, among other things, misuse of government funds, so his misuse of a government vehicle was highly inappropriate. If this story were told to anyone living in the golden era of swaggering gangsters, flashy nouveau riche businessmen, and corrupt “black gold” politics of the 1980s and 1990s, they would have laughed.
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