What happens when you say former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) should “eat shit” (吃大便) on national television? If you’re TVBS-N’s Liao Ying-ting (廖盈婷), you become a household name overnight — and get a promotion.
Last Saturday, while the network was airing a report on how pro-independence activists were urging Chen to use campaign funds that had been wired overseas to establish a political party, Liao was overheard chatting with other reporters in the news room. “This is nuts,” she said. “How on earth will Chen ever take out the money? [He should] just go and eat shit.”
TVBS punished Liao by docking her two demerit points on her performance record. However, it was quickly realized that the disgraced newswoman would be perfect as a motor-mouth pundit on political talk shows — a job that pays a lot more than real journalism.
Amid the heavy rains and strong winds brought by Super Typhoon Jangmi last weekend, a miracle occurred. Homegrown film Cape No. 7 (海角七號) beat Hollywood blockbuster The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor at the box office. Cape has broken the NT$200 million mark in box office takings and could end up being the highest-grossing film of the year, an achievement no one over the past three decades would have thought possible for a Taiwanese film. Some observers are even predicting that Cape will reach the NT$300 million mark by the end of the year, making it the highest-grossing Chinese-language film ever screened in Taiwan. As a result, big investors are now said to have become more interested in local productions.
Is Taiwanese cinema set for a renaissance? Pop Stop has seen previous predictions concerning the rebirth of the country’s film industry fall flat. It remains to be seen whether Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖), who directed Cape No. 7, will be equally successful with his next project, Seediq Bale (賽德克巴萊), an ambitious Aboriginal epic that stands a greater chance of becoming a hit with the critics than it does of making a lot of money, since it lacks two key ingredients needed for a local hit: youth drama starring pretty-faced idols, and patriotic appeal, as was best exemplified in last year’s hit Island Etude (練習曲).
Moving on to more frivolous matters, 42-year-old Pauline Lan (藍心湄) has reportedly taken an interest in a younger man — again. The object of her desire this time around is theater actor Na Wei-hsun (那維勳), who was observed spending the night at Lan’s mansion last weekend.
Gossip columnists are keen on the alleged Lan-Na tryst because it combines two of their favorite themes: infidelity, and a young man dating a rich, older woman. (Na is married and Lan, seven years his senior, is reportedly worth more than NT$1 billion.) Pop Stop thinks something is wrong with the prevailing notion that it’s perfectly normal for a male tycoon like Terry Gou (郭台銘) to bed a women young enough to be his granddaughter, while a successful woman like Lan stirs controversy by receiving a visit from a man who’s only a few years younger than herself.
Angela Chang (張韶涵) was recently spotted by Next magazine visiting her local Mercedes-Benz dealer sans makeup, a sure sign, Next says, that the pop star has lost her marbles.
You know the signs: Working hard to further one’s music career for five years running, buying a home and an expensive car, gaining weight during a vacation in Canada, frequenting nightclubs and leaving the house without first applying makeup — yep, it’s obvious that Chang is a just few clowns short of a circus.
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
Toward the outside edge of Taichung City, in Wufeng District (霧峰去), sits a sprawling collection of single-story buildings with tiled roofs belonging to the Wufeng Lin (霧峰林家) family, who rose to prominence through success in military, commercial, and artistic endeavors in the 19th century. Most of these buildings have brick walls and tiled roofs in the traditional reddish-brown color, but in the middle is one incongruous property with bright white walls and a black tiled roof: Yipu Garden (頤圃). Purists may scoff at the Japanese-style exterior and its radical departure from the Fujianese architectural style of the surrounding buildings. However, the property
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