Fresh from being crowned the “king” of the Mando-pop charts, Jay Chou (周杰倫) was unceremoniously usurped last week by Mayday (五月天). The pretty-boy rockers announced that sales of their latest release Poetry of the Day After (後青春期的詩) totaled over 1.3 million copies, and noted that they edged past the Chairman’s Capricorn (魔杰座), which just broke the 1 million mark.
Chou’s record company JVR Music (杰威爾音樂) took the announcement as a dig. Instead of congratulating the competition, the company issued a long-winded, huffy response that ended with, “there’s no need to brag,” reports the Liberty Times [the Taipei Times’ sister paper].
The hoopla left Mayday’s lead singer, A-hsin (阿信), exasperated. “[Chou] is using Rubik’s Cubes [to sell records], we’re doing concerts — it’s a lot more tiring,” said A-hsin, referring to the Rubik’s Cubes plastered with Chou’s face that are being offered as a freebie with his new album. But he quickly composed himself. “Whoever’s number one is not important. The most important thing is for everyone to have good sales.” That is, just as long as Jay isn’t number one ...
Only the Apple Daily can turn a pop idol’s mundane shopping trip into a lost-love-drove-her-to-drink-narrative. One of the paper’s ace reporters spotted Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒) at the Breeze Center’s (微風廣場) supermarket, where the 28-year-old singer was looking for a bottle of wine. Since Hsiao appeared “melancholic” and was lingering in the alcohol section, she obviously intended to drown her sorrows over male heartthrob model Leandro (李安卓), who got “snatched” out of her arms by model Liu Zhen (劉真).
Hsiao’s agent insists that Leandro is “just a friend” and Hsiao has plenty of prospective beaus lined up at the door — she just “hasn’t made her decision” yet. As for the wine, Hsiao and her mother regularly enjoy a nightcap. And who doesn’t? The photos accompanying the Apple Daily article are worthy of mention for the play-by-play captions that would make any stalker proud.
8:43pm: The store manager shows Hsiao a bottle of wine. 8:45pm: Hsiao is pictured with her brother, and she’s using a credit card to buy a bottle of red wine, which costs NT$2,100. 8:52pm: She’s in the Fendi store. She’s been looking at bags for what seems like an eternity. But in the end, she didn’t buy one.
German film director Wim Wenders was seen wandering the streets of Taipei earlier this week, on a visit with young filmmaker Arvin Chen (陳駿霖) [see Highlight on Page 15]; The director of Paris, Texas and Buena Vista Social Club is serving as executive producer for Chen’s upcoming film First Page Taipei (一頁台北). The Liberty Times reports that Wenders’ hosts took him to the Shida night market (師大夜市), where they frequently lost sight of the auteur, only to find him photographing scenes that caught his eye: a hardware store; an NT$10 discount store; and elderly shopkeepers.
A night market is an unlikely place to spot Japanese singer Ayumi Hamasaki, who performs tomorrow and Sunday at Taipei Arena. But if the demanding pop diva makes any public appearances, her assistants will have to be ready for anything — and that could mean having a toilet brush at hand.
A China Times article earlier this month relayed this past tale: on an outdoor photo shoot, Hamasaki told a male assistant she had to go to the bathroom. His immediate response was to find the nearest public toilet, scrub it clean, and make sure the coast was clear so the pop princess could have the facilities to herself.
Cheng Ching-hsiang (鄭青祥) turned a small triangle of concrete jammed between two old shops into a cool little bar called 9dimension. In front of the shop, a steampunk-like structure was welded by himself to serve as a booth where he prepares cocktails. “Yancheng used to be just old people,” he says, “but now young people are coming and creating the New Yancheng.” Around the corner, Yu Hsiu-jao (饒毓琇), opened Tiny Cafe. True to its name, it is the size of a cupboard and serves cold-brewed coffee. “Small shops are so special and have personality,” she says, “people come to Yancheng to find such treasures.” She
In July of 1995, a group of local DJs began posting an event flyer around Taipei. It was cheaply photocopied and nearly all in English, with a hand-drawn map on the back and, on the front, a big red hand print alongside one prominent line of text, “Finally… THE PARTY.” The map led to a remote floodplain in Taipei County (now New Taipei City) just across the Tamsui River from Taipei. The organizers got permission from no one. They just drove up in a blue Taiwanese pickup truck, set up a generator, two speakers, two turntables and a mixer. They
Late last month Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Theresa Lazaro told the Philippine Senate that the nation has sufficient funds to evacuate the nearly 170,000 Filipino residents in Taiwan, 84 percent of whom are migrant workers, in the event of war. Agencies have been exploring evacuation scenarios since early this year, she said. She also observed that since the Philippines has only limited ships, the government is consulting security agencies for alternatives. Filipinos are a distant third in overall migrant worker population. Indonesia has over 248,000 workers, followed by roughly 240,000 Vietnamese. It should be noted that there are another 170,000
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu’s (洪秀柱) attendance at the Chinese Communist Party’s (CPP) “Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War” parade in Beijing is infuriating, embarrassing and insulting to nearly everyone in Taiwan, and Taiwan’s friends and allies. She is also ripping off bandages and pouring salt into old wounds. In the process she managed to tie both the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) into uncomfortable knots. The KMT continues to honor their heroic fighters, who defended China against the invading Japanese Empire, which inflicted unimaginable horrors on the
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