Taiwan’s paparazzi outdid themselves this week by portraying actress Annie Yi (伊能靜) as a partying harlot who doesn’t want anything to do with her husband, Harlem Yu (庾澄慶), and their son, Harry (哈利), after the Liberty Times (自由時報) (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) and Next Magazine (壹週刊) published photos of the singer and movie star walking hand-in-hand with fellow Taiwanese actor Laurence Huang (黃維德).
Rumors of the former soap stars’ affair have been doing the rounds for a while, even before they both moved to Beijing to pursue acting careers in China. Reports claim that the two once lived in the same apartment building and currently have flats in the same complex.
The incriminating snaps, which clearly show the two holding hands while crossing a Beijing street, seem to put the matter to bed, as it were. When asked for comment, Yu denied that he and his wife were separating.
The images, incidentally, eclipse earlier rumors that Yi was involved with Liu Tao (劉韜), the former owner of a talent agency, which emerged when the pair were photographed eating dinner together and singing at a KTV. Liu’s associates promptly stopped tongues wagging by revealing he bats for the other team.
With so much rumor and innuendo surrounding Yi, perhaps Yu should have listened to his mother, who reportedly advised him against marrying the actress.
Yu’s mother — who, in the picture published in Next, bears a striking resemblance to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il — has also complained that she is now the primary female caregiver for Harry.
Fortunetellers couldn’t help but weigh in on the whole affair. After studying Huang’s nose, the geomancers determined that he must be good in bed. That’s right, in Taiwan its not big hands or big feet, but a sharp nose that reveals sexual prowess.
The subtext of the whole “scandal,” it seems to Pop Stop’s feminist take, is this: Men, you may leave your family back in Taiwan and have a second wife (or girlfriend) and live it up in China, but Yi is blazing new ground and proving that what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Although nothing compared to Vivi Wang’s (王婉霏) infamous “black forest incident” or Liu Zhen’s (劉真) nipple slip, punters got more than their fare share of skin this week when Shatina Chen (陳思璇) showed off a considerable amount of her leggy assets. The former “queen of the catwalk” had been laying low since she was caught last year in a late-night rendezvous with a married man on Yanmingshan. She returned to the spotlight this week in high style after performing a sexy number at a press conference during which she wore a skimpy black skirt that provided a clear view of her white knickers. Is there nothing models won’t expose for a little exposure?
If gossip rags are to be believed, Chen’s long legs were alluring enough to enrapture David Tao (陶吉吉), who sweated through her performance and drooled over her afterwards — an amazing feat, really, because Tao is notorious for pursuing sweet young thangs.
Yesterday’s United Evening News reported the suicide of Ivy Li (黎礎寧), runner-up in the talent show One Million Star’s (超級星光大道) third series.
Li reportedly took her own life by burning charcoal in her car in Taichung City.
Oct. 27 to Nov. 2 Over a breakfast of soymilk and fried dough costing less than NT$400, seven officials and engineers agreed on a NT$400 million plan — unaware that it would mark the beginning of Taiwan’s semiconductor empire. It was a cold February morning in 1974. Gathered at the unassuming shop were Economics minister Sun Yun-hsuan (孫運璿), director-general of Transportation and Communications Kao Yu-shu (高玉樹), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) president Wang Chao-chen (王兆振), Telecommunications Laboratories director Kang Pao-huang (康寶煌), Executive Yuan secretary-general Fei Hua (費驊), director-general of Telecommunications Fang Hsien-chi (方賢齊) and Radio Corporation of America (RCA) Laboratories director Pan
The classic warmth of a good old-fashioned izakaya beckons you in, all cozy nooks and dark wood finishes, as tables order a third round and waiters sling tapas-sized bites and assorted — sometimes unidentifiable — skewered meats. But there’s a romantic hush about this Ximending (西門町) hotspot, with cocktails savored, plating elegant and never rushed and daters and diners lit by candlelight and chandelier. Each chair is mismatched and the assorted tables appear to be the fanciest picks from a nearby flea market. A naked sewing mannequin stands in a dimly lit corner, adorned with antique mirrors and draped foliage
The consensus on the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chair race is that Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) ran a populist, ideological back-to-basics campaign and soundly defeated former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), the candidate backed by the big institutional players. Cheng tapped into a wave of popular enthusiasm within the KMT, while the institutional players’ get-out-the-vote abilities fell flat, suggesting their power has weakened significantly. Yet, a closer look at the race paints a more complicated picture, raising questions about some analysts’ conclusions, including my own. TURNOUT Here is a surprising statistic: Turnout was 130,678, or 39.46 percent of the 331,145 eligible party
The election of Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) as chair of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) marked a triumphant return of pride in the “Chinese” in the party name. Cheng wants Taiwanese to be proud to call themselves Chinese again. The unambiguous winner was a return to the KMT ideology that formed in the early 2000s under then chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) put into practice as far as he could, until ultimately thwarted by hundreds of thousands of protestors thronging the streets in what became known as the Sunflower movement in 2014. Cheng is an unambiguous Chinese ethnonationalist,