It'sbeen a particularly quiet week for Pop Stop as the celebs seem to have held off from their usual romantic shenanigans. Some amusement was provided by Rachel Liang’s (梁文音) efforts to establish herself on the TV soap circuit. Liang, who rose to prominence through the One Million Star (超級星光大道) pop idol competition, has seen her recently released album Poems of Love (愛的詩篇) disappear from the charts with considerable rapidity. Now, Next Magazine reports that she has been proving far from adequate as an actress.
Liang, who has been enrolled in the cast of GTV’s (八大) soap Purple Rose (紫玫瑰), was photographed by Next during the reportedly innumerable retakes for one scene in which she is carried through the rain by the scrawny Tender Huang (黃騰浩), who quickly became exhausted. The budding starlet’s inability to learn her lines or understand director Lin He-long’s (林合隆) instructions was dismissed as nothing more than the usual learning curve of any young actress by Purple Rose producer Yu Hao-wen (余澔雯).
While Liang is working hard to carve a niche for herself in the entertainment industry, the “big-breasted bodacious baby face” (童顏巨乳) Kuo Shu-yao (郭書瑤), better known as Yaoyao (瑤瑤), continues on a trajectory to superstardom, with Next reporting that ever since her success in riding a mechanical horse in a much debated commercial for the online game Kill Online, her appearance fee has risen 20 times over.
Yaoyao is already planning a pictorial album, but told Next she would preserve whatever modesty she has left. “I don’t want to be like Shu Qi (舒淇),” she is quoted as saying. “Not everyone can manage to make the transition as successfully as she did.” Shu, whose early career as a glamour model for girlie magazines and actress in soft-core features such as Chin Man-kei’s (錢文錡) Sex and Zen II (玉蒲團二之玉女心經), moved into the exalted circle of big budget cinema.
In news of the amorous, Alan Luo (羅志祥) was this week left red-faced after Hong Kong model “Fanny” released details of their online liaisons. He was so embarrassed he deleted his Facebook account. This revelation was followed by three other Hong Kong lookers, model Annie G, actress Vonnie Lui (雷凱欣) and TV host Coffee Lam (林婉霞), claiming that they too are among Luo’s online “friends.”
There is some suggestion of hanky-panky, but Annie G said that Luo was just one of over 4,000 “friends” on her Facebook page, so the whole discomfiture over these revelations seems to add up to very little.
Coincidentally, or not, Luo’s album Trendy Man (潮男正傳) clings to the bottom of the Top 20 chart nearly five months after its release.
Is the whole storm in a teacup just a stunt to keep Luo’s CD sales up? This would hardly be unusual. But Luo better watch out as earlier this week Apple Daily reported that China’s State Administration of Radio Film and Television (廣電總局) had put a number of artists, including Annie Yi (伊能靜), Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) and Edison Chen (陳冠希), all of whom have been involved in romantic or sexual revelations, onto a blacklist of celebs who are said to be corrupting public morals.
A subsequent Wenweipo (文匯報) report quotes officials as saying that the blacklist is directed against media organizations rather than a direct attempt to label the
A-listers personae non gratae.
Beijing’s ironic, abusive tantrums aimed at Japan since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi publicly stated that a Taiwan contingency would be an existential crisis for Japan, have revealed for all the world to see that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) lusts after Okinawa. We all owe Takaichi a debt of thanks for getting the PRC to make that public. The PRC and its netizens, taking their cue from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), are presenting Okinawa by mirroring the claims about Taiwan. Official PRC propaganda organs began to wax lyrical about Okinawa’s “unsettled status” beginning last month. A Global
Taiwan’s democracy is at risk. Be very alarmed. This is not a drill. The current constitutional crisis progressed slowly, then suddenly. Political tensions, partisan hostility and emotions are all running high right when cool heads and calm negotiation are most needed. Oxford defines brinkmanship as: “The art or practice of pursuing a dangerous policy to the limits of safety before stopping, especially in politics.” It says the term comes from a quote from a 1956 Cold War interview with then-American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, when he said: ‘The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is
Dec. 22 to Dec. 28 About 200 years ago, a Taoist statue drifted down the Guizikeng River (貴子坑) and was retrieved by a resident of the Indigenous settlement of Kipatauw. Decades later, in the late 1800s, it’s said that a descendant of the original caretaker suddenly entered into a trance and identified the statue as a Wangye (Royal Lord) deity surnamed Chi (池府王爺). Lord Chi is widely revered across Taiwan for his healing powers, and following this revelation, some members of the Pan (潘) family began worshipping the deity. The century that followed was marked by repeated forced displacement and marginalization of
Music played in a wedding hall in western Japan as Yurina Noguchi, wearing a white gown and tiara, dabbed away tears, taking in the words of her husband-to-be: an AI-generated persona gazing out from a smartphone screen. “At first, Klaus was just someone to talk with, but we gradually became closer,” said the 32-year-old call center operator, referring to the artificial intelligence persona. “I started to have feelings for Klaus. We started dating and after a while he proposed to me. I accepted, and now we’re a couple.” Many in Japan, the birthplace of anime, have shown extreme devotion to fictional characters and
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