The frenzy over Faye Wong’s (王菲) reported miscarriage continues unabated. According to the Liberty Times [the Taipei Times’ sister paper], the media wildfire has spread from Hong Kong and Taiwan to China, where showbiz gossip Web sites speculate that Wong’s husband, Li Yapeng (李亞鵬), was having an affair with Chinese actress Miao Pu (苗圃), which Miao angrily denied.
Rumormongers then speculated that Wong, 39, and Li, who turns 37 tomorrow, were to divorce because the Mando-pop diva did not want to try for another child because of her age. Li’s manager, Ma Jia (馬葭), angrily denied the scuttlebutt as “crazy,” the Liberty Times reports. Wong’s friend, actress Carina Lau (劉嘉玲), echoed Ma’s denial, saying, “I think it’s better for Faye Wong to talk about her matters herself.”
Breathing a collective sigh of relief are the members of girl band S.H.E. and boy band Fahrenheit (飛輪海), who found out that the yogurt drinks they endorse in China were not tainted with melamine, said the product’s manufacturer Mengniu (蒙牛). The two groups, which star in commercials for Mengniu, will carry on as planned with a six-concert tour of China, but their record company says whether the groups will continue with product endorsements in the future remains up in the air.
All this talk of tainted milk has got Chang Fei (張菲) thinking — about himself. A Liberty Times report reveals the TV show host’s musings on current events.
On a recent taping of his show Variety Big Brother (綜藝大哥大), Chang declared that he has stopped drinking pearl milk tea (珍珠奶茶), and no longer takes milk in his coffee. Speaking of coffee gave Chang reason to pay tribute to his friend, the deceased comedian Ni Min-jan (倪敏然), best known for his uncanny impersonations of former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮). Chang says Ni was ahead of his time, being the first in Taiwan to come up with the idea of canned coffee over 30 years ago. Milk, mortality, coffee — it all makes perfect sense.
But at least Chang knows his job is to take people’s minds off things like food scares and cross-strait relations. He gave a nod to Taiwan’s homegrown, surprise box office hit, Cape No. 7 (海角七號), noting the “progress of Taiwan’s film industry.” He laughed, he cried and fancied appearing in a blockbuster himself. He praised director Wei Te-sheng (魏德勝), and said, “You could come and ask me to play in your next film.”
It’s no wonder Chang is looking Wei’s way. Cape No. 7 has broken the NT$100 million mark in box office takings, and the movie’s stars are the center of attention. The male lead, Amis pop singer Van Fan (范逸臣), celebrated the movie’s success by fulfilling a promise he made earlier to swim naked at a beach in Kenting (墾丁) if the film grossed more than NT$30 million.
As with many a big screen hit, there has been conjecture of romance among the cast. A Liberty Times report speculates that Fan and the film’s female lead, Japanese actress Tanaka Chie, had engaged in some offscreen method acting.
At a celebration party at Fan’s pub in the eastern district of Taipei, all eyes were on the pair for outward signs of inward stirrings.
But they didn’t leave the party together. After all, Fan does have a girlfriend, the report said before mentioning the rumor that Chie was slated to star in Fan’s latest music video, but was nixed because of objections from Fan’s girlfriend.
And finally, Wang Lee-hom (王力宏) says he isn’t gay. The Mando-pop superstar, who played to 12,000 fans at his Music Man concert in Taipei City last weekend, told the Apple Daily that his mom even asked him once if he were gay, implying that it would be “OK” if he were.
Recently the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its Mini-Me partner in the legislature, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), have been arguing that construction of chip fabs in the US by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is little more than stripping Taiwan of its assets. For example, KMT Legislative Caucus First Deputy Secretary-General Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) in January said that “This is not ‘reciprocal cooperation’ ... but a substantial hollowing out of our country.” Similarly, former TPP Chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) contended it constitutes “selling Taiwan out to the United States.” The two pro-China parties are proposing a bill that
Institutions signalling a fresh beginning and new spirit often adopt new slogans, symbols and marketing materials, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is no exception. Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), soon after taking office as KMT chair, released a new slogan that plays on the party’s acronym: “Kind Mindfulness Team.” The party recently released a graphic prominently featuring the red, white and blue of the flag with a Chinese slogan “establishing peace, blessings and fortune marching forth” (締造和平,幸福前行). One part of the graphic also features two hands in blue and white grasping olive branches in a stylized shape of Taiwan. Bonus points for
March 9 to March 15 “This land produced no horses,” Qing Dynasty envoy Yu Yung-ho (郁永河) observed when he visited Taiwan in 1697. He didn’t mean that there were no horses at all; it was just difficult to transport them across the sea and raise them in the hot and humid climate. “Although 10,000 soldiers were stationed here, the camps had fewer than 1,000 horses,” Yu added. Starting from the Dutch in the 1600s, each foreign regime brought horses to Taiwan. But they remained rare animals, typically only owned by the government or
“M yeolgong jajangmyeon (anti-communism zhajiangmian, 滅共炸醬麵), let’s all shout together — myeolgong!” a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Dongtan, located about 35km south of Seoul, South Korea, calls out before serving a bowl of Korean-style zhajiangmian —black bean noodles. Diners repeat the phrase before tucking in. This political-themed restaurant, named Myeolgong Banjeom (滅共飯館, “anti-communism restaurant”), is operated by a single person and does not take reservations; therefore long queues form regularly outside, and most customers appear sympathetic to its political theme. Photos of conservative public figures hang on the walls, alongside political slogans and poems written in Chinese characters; South
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