Appearing in a suggestive advertisement for an online game in which your breasts are shown swaying as you ride an undulating exercise machine can put a wannabe on the fast track to superstardom. That, at least, has been the case for “big-breasted bodacious baby face” (童顏巨乳) Yaoyao (瑤瑤), real name Kuo Shu-yao (郭書瑤), who last week was spotted having a business dinner with representatives from Yoshimoto Kogyo, a major Japanese entertainment conglomerate.
Yaoyao’s record company Seed Music (種子音樂) — yes, her debut album is slated to hit record stores next month — said there is indeed a plan for the sex kitten to become a pop star in Japan in the manner of Vivian Hsu (徐若瑄).
Seed Music appears to be on to something. Given the warm reception Yaoyao has received among Taiwan’s zhainan (宅男) community, it is not a stretch to imagine the 19-year-old winning the hearts of Japanese otaku as well.
Meanwhile, former superstar Joey Wang (王祖賢) was in the news again this week after it was reported that the 42-year-old recluse has become a Buddhist nun.
Wang rose to fame after starring in 1987 blockbuster A Chinese Ghost Story (倩女幽魂) and enjoyed a notable career throughout the 1990s. She retired in 2002 and has led a low-profile life in Canada ever since, where she is said to have donned the habit last month.
Gossip observers think Wang’s sudden ability to “see through the vanity of the secular world” (看破紅塵) has something to do with her two failed relationships. One was a 16-year-long romance with musician Chi Chin (齊秦), the other an extramarital affair with Hong Kong entertainment mogul Peter Lam (林建岳).
One of the few openly gay celebrities in Taiwan has aggravated members of the TV-watching public by referring to homosexuals as niang (娘), the Chinese equivalent of “sissy,” on a popular television show, reports the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper).
Over the past month or so Kevin Tsai (蔡康永) of Here Comes Kang and Xi (康熙來了), which he co-hosts with Little S (小S), has been using the word niang to address gay celebrities such as Kuo Hsin (郭鑫), Ti Chih-chieh (狄志杰) and Hsu Chien-kuo (許建國) when they appear on his show.
Viewers angered by his use of the term, which when used by a stranger is considered demeaning, posted angry comments on the Internet like the following: “The sissy host should think of himself before calling other people sissies.”
In other gay-related news, pop diva A-mei (阿妹), real name Chang Hui-mei (張惠妹), will introduce her new persona A-mit (阿密特) to gay fans at a party on July 18 at Riverside Live House (西門紅樓展演館) in Taipei. Unlike A-mei, A-mit is said to have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to saccharine ballads and KTV-friendly tunes. Those who have seen A-mit perform say the black-clad rocker screams, hisses and howls, but never croons.
To catch A-mit at Riverside, partygoers have to be biologically male or identified as male on their ID cards, and wear something “rainbowy.”
Professing concern that the star’s female fans will feel left out, A-mit’s record company, Gold Typhoon (金牌大風), promises a women-only A-mit party if the gay pa (gay趴) goes well.
Under pressure, President William Lai (賴清德) has enacted his first cabinet reshuffle. Whether it will be enough to staunch the bleeding remains to be seen. Cabinet members in the Executive Yuan almost always end up as sacrificial lambs, especially those appointed early in a president’s term. When presidents are under pressure, the cabinet is reshuffled. This is not unique to any party or president; this is the custom. This is the case in many democracies, especially parliamentary ones. In Taiwan, constitutionally the president presides over the heads of the five branches of government, each of which is confusingly translated as “president”
By 1971, heroin and opium use among US troops fighting in Vietnam had reached epidemic proportions, with 42 percent of American servicemen saying they’d tried opioids at least once and around 20 percent claiming some level of addiction, according to the US Department of Defense. Though heroin use by US troops has been little discussed in the context of Taiwan, these and other drugs — produced in part by rogue Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies then in Thailand and Myanmar — also spread to US military bases on the island, where soldiers were often stoned or high. American military policeman
An attempt to promote friendship between Japan and countries in Africa has transformed into a xenophobic row about migration after inaccurate media reports suggested the scheme would lead to a “flood of immigrants.” The controversy erupted after the Japan International Cooperation Agency, or JICA, said this month it had designated four Japanese cities as “Africa hometowns” for partner countries in Africa: Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania. The program, announced at the end of an international conference on African development in Yokohama, will involve personnel exchanges and events to foster closer ties between the four regional Japanese cities — Imabari, Kisarazu, Sanjo and
The Venice Film Festival kicked off with the world premiere of Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia Wednesday night on the Lido. The opening ceremony of the festival also saw Francis Ford Coppola presenting filmmaker Werner Herzog with a lifetime achievement prize. The 82nd edition of the glamorous international film festival is playing host to many Hollywood stars, including George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Dwayne Johnson, and famed auteurs, from Guillermo del Toro to Kathryn Bigelow, who all have films debuting over the next 10 days. The conflict in Gaza has also already been an everpresent topic both outside the festival’s walls, where
RSS