Hong Kong media was in a tasteless tizzy on Tuesday as it reported that pop icon Faye Wong (王菲) had miscarried what would have been her second child with husband Li Yapeng (李亞鵬). Her manager’s strange denial that Wong had even been pregnant only added to the hullabaloo.
Some newspapers speculated that the 39-year-old Wong’s “advanced age” might have had something to do with the miscarriage, or that it might have actually been an induced abortion after Wong’s doctor noticed that the fetus had an “abnormality.” Wong has reportedly been anxious about her ability to conceive a healthy child after her younger daughter was born with a harelip.
After news broke that Wong had lost her baby, manager Chen Jia-ying (陳家瑛) hurriedly insisted that the star had in fact never been pregnant. In an announcement no doubt designed to save her notoriously private client from further public mortification, Chen proclaimed that Wong’s period had just been a little late and, apparently, things are now back to their normal flow. This is in spite of the fact that just over one month ago, Chen herself had announced the pregnancy by telling a reporter that congratulations were due to Wong and her husband, who also confirmed the rumors.
It’s been one heck of a cruddy week for Wong. Just a few days before news of her miscarriage broke, she was caught by Oriental Sunday leaving actress Carina Lau’s (劉嘉玲) home with puffy eyes and a red face. The gossip rag speculated that Wong’s apparently tear-filled pow-wow with her bestie might have centered around Li’s alleged obsession with hanging out at nightclubs and bars while Wong is stuck at home with her two young daughters. Sometimes Li is so wrapped up in whatever it is that he does at those nightclubs that he won’t even answer his wife’s phone calls, the article says.
Lau may also have something to commiserate about with Wong: the Hong Kong media’s increasingly fervent interest in her fecundity since her July nuptials to Tony Leung (梁朝偉). The Oriental Daily News reported that when Lau and her mom took a trip to Hangzhou to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, they didn’t just pass their time sightseeing and feasting on local delicacies. The women also went to a Buddhist temple and prayed that Leung’s magical seed would plant itself in Lau’s womb forthwith. Despite unceasing speculation over when the Leung-Lau superfetus will finally come into being, Lau has taken a much more pragmatic attitude toward childbearing, telling reporters: “getting pregnant and having a baby is a matter of fate. You can’t force the timing.”
Speaking of fate, Taiwanese singer Victor Wong (品冠) recently let slip to the United Daily News that he narrowly missed being a passenger on the flight that crashed at Madrid’s Barajas airport last month, killing 153 people. Wong said he and a group of his buddies had been tossing around the idea of a sightseeing tour to the Canary Islands, where the plane was headed, before deciding Barcelona had more sights to see.
Victor Wong’s near miss, coupled with the recent death of a good friend in a car accident, plunged him into a period of introspection about his own mortality. “Life is truly unpredictable,” he mused philosophically. “We should all make merry while we can.”
And make merry he did. The newspaper wrapped up its item on Wong by noting that the pop star had gained 5kg of pure fat by indulging a bit too gleefully in Barcelona’s delicious seafood and red wine. In order to regain his formerly lithe figure, Wong now has to embark on a strenuous regime of crash dieting. So much for enjoying life while you can.
On a lighter note, Fish Leong (梁靜茹), the wide-eyed Malaysian singer whose album Today Is Valentine’s Day (今天情人節) is a current chart-topper, is heads over heels in love. Her new squeeze is Mr T — no, no, no, not the mohawked, fool-pitying 1980s wrestling superstar. “Mr T” and “Tony” are nicknames the Taiwanese media has given the media-shy fellow who reportedly wooed Leong with sweet compliments and a bottle of her favorite pink champagne at a dinner in Shanghai last December.
Leong told the press that she’s not quite ready to call the bookish-looking Mr T her boyfriend yet, but that he pampers her and they have a knack for saying the same thing at the same time. Mr T, reportedly a manager at a liquor company, prefers to stay out of the spotlight, keeping a low profile and wearing casual, non-flashy duds when he’s out in public with his lady love, reports the United Daily News.
The Taipei Times last week reported that the rising share of seniors in the population is reshaping the nation’s housing markets. According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, about 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident. H&B Realty chief researcher Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨), quoted in the article, said that there is rising demand for elderly-friendly housing, including units with elevators, barrier-free layouts and proximity to healthcare services. Hsu and others cited in the article highlighted the changing family residential dynamics, as children no longer live with parents,
It is jarring how differently Taiwan’s politics is portrayed in the international press compared to the local Chinese-language press. Viewed from abroad, Taiwan is seen as a geopolitical hotspot, or “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth,” as the Economist once blazoned across their cover. Meanwhile, tasked with facing down those existential threats, Taiwan’s leaders are dying their hair pink. These include former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), among others. They are demonstrating what big fans they are of South Korean K-pop sensations Blackpink ahead of their concerts this weekend in Kaohsiung.
Taiwan is one of the world’s greatest per-capita consumers of seafood. Whereas the average human is thought to eat around 20kg of seafood per year, each Taiwanese gets through 27kg to 35kg of ocean delicacies annually, depending on which source you find most credible. Given the ubiquity of dishes like oyster omelet (蚵仔煎) and milkfish soup (虱目魚湯), the higher estimate may well be correct. By global standards, let alone local consumption patterns, I’m not much of a seafood fan. It’s not just a matter of taste, although that’s part of it. What I’ve read about the environmental impact of the
Oct 20 to Oct 26 After a day of fighting, the Japanese Army’s Second Division was resting when a curious delegation of two Scotsmen and 19 Taiwanese approached their camp. It was Oct. 20, 1895, and the troops had reached Taiye Village (太爺庄) in today’s Hunei District (湖內), Kaohsiung, just 10km away from their final target of Tainan. Led by Presbyterian missionaries Thomas Barclay and Duncan Ferguson, the group informed the Japanese that resistance leader Liu Yung-fu (劉永福) had fled to China the previous night, leaving his Black Flag Army fighters behind and the city in chaos. On behalf of the
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