The 20th Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎) ceremony has come and gone with the notable absence of some celebrities, questionable performances by others and rumors of backroom sleaze.
The Apple Daily reported that this was the fifth year that Jay Chou (周杰倫) failed to make an appearance at the ceremony, where he took top honors for Best Mandarin Male Singer, Best Song of the Year and Best Music Video. He was busy with concerts in China. The Chairman’s ex-lover and Mando-pop diva, Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), didn’t show up either. Apparently she was in Shanghai getting ready to open up her own clothing store.
Their absence led a quick-witted reporter from NOWnews (今日新聞) to suggest that these artists are more interested in making a buck in China than supporting Taiwan’s music industry.
Bloggers, on the other hand, questioned whether Chou should have won the best singer award in the first place. It turns out that some music fans feel that the Chairman’s Mandarin pronunciation is too, er, taike (台客). One blogger went so far as to warn those learning Mandarin as a second language to avoid Chou’s songs.
Meanwhile, the much-anticipated performance by Huang Yi-ling (黃乙玲), who took home the Best Taiwanese Female Singer award, turned out to be mediocre. The singer and producer apparently had a throat condition and gave what the Apple Daily called one of her worst performances, ever.
Perhaps Chan and Chou should follow in the footsteps of Korean boy band Super Junior. The 13-member band reportedly lip-synched its way through its Golden Melody sets to the squeals of adoring teenage fans.
In other Golden Melody news, the China Times wrote that one of the organizers for the awards ceremony, Chen Le-jung (陳樂融), is also a judge for Super Idol (超級偶像) — a reality “talent” show. When former Super Idol judge Shandee Chen (陳珊妮) won the award for Best Mandarin Female Singer, the China Times speculated that there might be some back room dealings going on. When asked for comment, Chen Le-jung said he wouldn’t dare pressure any of the judges.
It looks like Gary Tsao (曹格), winner of last year’s Golden Melody Award for Best Mandarin Male Singer, is something of a lush who can’t hold his liquor. “Tsao gets blindly drunk and suffers a beating (曹格被爆喝茫挨打),” screamed a headline in Wednesday’s Apple Daily. The report said Tsao was admitted to the hospital with a puffy face and cut pinky finger after celebrating his 30th birthday at Person, a Taipei nightspot.
The gossip rag even provided a list of Tsao’s past drunken indiscretions, which included kicking a sign (2006), scowling at reporters (October last year), scaring his friends (same month) and getting bitten (November last year). Small wonder, Apple reported, that Tsao’s wife doesn’t let him hold their baby when he’s drinking.
Recalling the latter 2008 incident, paparazzi asked Tsao if the wound on his pinky finger was the result of a bite. The singer’s agent emphatically denied the suggestion and said he cut his finger on broken glass. He added that Tsao stayed at a hospital overnight because he was too drunk to be anesthetized when he was first admitted.
Chinese actress and singer Zhou Xun (周迅) has split with her Taiwanese lover, stylist Lee Da-chi (李大齊). In a statement released to the media, Zhou said the break up was due to irreconcilable differences. Her lack of specifics, however, sent the rumor mill into overdrive with Apple quoting a Chinese gossip Web site that said Zhou had dumped Lee for renowned Chinese novelist Wang Shuo (王朔), who apparently gave The Banquet (豪門夜宴) star a Rolls Royce. The pair are said to have shacked up in Beijing.
VIEW THIS PAGE Noah Buchan
If one asks Taiwanese why house prices are so high or why the nation is so built up or why certain policies cannot be carried out, one common answer is that “Taiwan is too small.” This is actually true, though not in the way people think. The National Property Administration (NPA), responsible for tracking and managing the government’s real estate assets, maintains statistics on how much land the government owns. As of the end of last year, land for official use constituted 293,655 hectares, for public use 1,732,513 hectares, for non-public use 216,972 hectares and for state enterprises 34 hectares, yielding
The small platform at Duoliang Train Station in Taitung County’s Taimali Township (太麻里) served villagers from 1992 to 2006, but was eventually shut down due to lack of use. Just 10 years later, the abandoned train station had become widely known as the most beautiful station in Taiwan, and visitors were so frequent that the village had to start restricting traffic. Nowadays, Duoliang Village (多良) is known as a bit of a tourist trap, with a mandatory, albeit modest, admission fee of NT$10 giving access to a crowded lane of vendors with a mediocre view of the ocean and the trains
Traditionally, indigenous people in Taiwan’s mountains practice swidden cultivation, or “slash and burn” agriculture, a practice common in human history. According to a 2016 research article in the International Journal of Environmental Sustainability, among the Atayal people, this began with a search for suitable forested slopeland. The trees are burnt for fertilizer and the land cleared of stones. The stones and wood are then piled up to make fences, while both dead and standing trees are retained on the plot. The fences are used to grow climbing crops like squash and beans. The plot itself supports farming for three years.
President William Lai (賴清德) on Nov. 25 last year announced in a Washington Post op-ed that “my government will introduce a historic US$40 billion supplementary defense budget, an investment that underscores our commitment to defending Taiwan’s democracy.” Lai promised “significant new arms acquisitions from the United States” and to “invest in cutting-edge technologies and expand Taiwan’s defense industrial base,” to “bolster deterrence by inserting greater costs and uncertainties into Beijing’s decision-making on the use of force.” Announcing it in the Washington Post was a strategic gamble, both geopolitically and domestically, with Taiwan’s international credibility at stake. But Lai’s message was exactly
RSS