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.
In recent weeks the Trump Administration has been demanding that Taiwan transfer half of its chip manufacturing to the US. In an interview with NewsNation, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said that the US would need 50 percent of domestic chip production to protect Taiwan. He stated, discussing Taiwan’s chip production: “My argument to them was, well, if you have 95 percent, how am I gonna get it to protect you? You’re going to put it on a plane? You’re going to put it on a boat?” The stench of the Trump Administration’s mafia-style notions of “protection” was strong
Every now and then, it’s nice to just point somewhere on a map and head out with no plan. In Taiwan, where convenience reigns, food options are plentiful and people are generally friendly and helpful, this type of trip is that much easier to pull off. One day last November, a spur-of-the-moment day hike in the hills of Chiayi County turned into a surprisingly memorable experience that impressed on me once again how fortunate we all are to call this island home. The scenery I walked through that day — a mix of forest and farms reaching up into the clouds
With one week left until election day, the drama is high in the race for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chair. The race is still potentially wide open between the three frontrunners. The most accurate poll is done by Apollo Survey & Research Co (艾普羅民調公司), which was conducted a week and a half ago with two-thirds of the respondents party members, who are the only ones eligible to vote. For details on the candidates, check the Oct. 4 edition of this column, “A look at the KMT chair candidates” on page 12. The popular frontrunner was 56-year-old Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文)
“How China Threatens to Force Taiwan Into a Total Blackout” screamed a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) headline last week, yet another of the endless clickbait examples of the energy threat via blockade that doesn’t exist. Since the headline is recycled, I will recycle the rebuttal: once industrial power demand collapses (there’s a blockade so trade is gone, remember?) “a handful of shops and factories could run for months on coal and renewables, as Ko Yun-ling (柯昀伶) and Chao Chia-wei (趙家緯) pointed out in a piece at Taiwan Insight earlier this year.” Sadly, the existence of these facts will not stop the
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