Pop Stop begins this week with the curious case of Lei Hong (雷洪). The star of the popular FTV soap opera Mom’s House (娘家) and winner of last year’s Golden Bell Award (金鐘獎) for best male actor has a complaint of four “wives” that wouldn’t look out of place in Big Love or The Last Emperor.
Four wives, you say? That’s right, and they all live together under the same roof in Taipei. To maintain harmony, Lei says, he refuses to spend an entire night with just one wife.
However, not all is happiness at the Lei homestead. The 61-year-old announced last week that he had decided to take a fifth “wife” — a revelation that immediately drew criticism from his mother, the media and his other four wives.
Oddly enough, Lei’s taking on a new roommate wasn’t the issue that angered the other four wives, because they have already accepted the new wife into the family, according to reports in the China Times, Apple Daily, Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) and other media outlets.
It was Lei’s decision to make the wedding ceremony a public affair that caused strife at home. It turns out that holding a public wedding ceremony in Taiwan comes dangerously close to making the nuptials legally binding, unlike the arrangements with his other four consorts, which are presumably unregistered.
Lei has since canceled the ceremony.
It should be noted that Lei has sired seven sons and one daughter. His eldest son is 40, as is his youngest wife.
The surreal family affair hit a fever pitch over the weekend when Lei called a press conference to apologize for his inappropriate behavior. The mea culpa saw him bowing several times and slapping his own face in penance for being a bad influence on society. He said he hadn’t slept or eaten in two days, his blood pressure had reached 180 and he was on several different kinds of medication.
Pop Stop thinks that lack
of sleep, high blood pressure
and pill popping would be par for the course for anyone with five partners.
And now news of a sixth wife: Yesterday’s tabloids reported that Lei was once legally married to yet another woman — the mother of his 40-year-old son. They divorced four decades ago
The character Lei plays on TV only has two wives — proving once again that the truth is stranger than fiction.
In other wedding gossip, Yu Ke-hsin (喻可欣) is getting significant mileage out of her fling with Andy Lau (劉德華).
Ever since Lau publicly acknowledged his relationship with Hong Kong star Carol Choo (朱麗倩) a few weeks ago, Yu has been in the news reliving memories of her own three-year relationship with the Canto-pop star, which ended way back in the mid-1980s.
This includes flogging a 2004 expose she wrote about the affair, a work that intimately describes their first meeting, Lau’s wild pursuit of the (at the time) young Taiwanese actress and how she was deflowered five days later.
Yu is also trying to auction off stuffed animals and a yellow heart-shaped pillow Lau gave her. As of press time there were no takers.
The Apple Daily wanted to know if Lau pursued Choo like he did Yu. “It’s different,” she said. “Andy Lau was chasing me while Choo was sticking with him.”
Finally, Big S (大S) — aka Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) — showed off her snarky side this past week at a screening for the movie On His Majesty’s Secret Service (大內密探靈靈狗), which was attended by its director Wang Jing (王晶).
When asked by reporters why she hasn’t gone to Hollywood to develop her career, the starlet, who is known for her eye-raising comments, said that Tinseltown only employs Chinese actors for movies because they are cheaper, an obvious slight directed towards singer Jay Chou (周杰倫).
The Chairman was recently picked to portray the Green Hornet’s sidekick in an upcoming Hollywood remake of the 1960s television program.
According to the Liberty Times, Big S went on to comment that, like Bruce Lee (李小龍), who played the original sidekick, Chinese actors always come back to Asia.
At the same screening, younger sister Little S (小S) — real name Dee Hsu (徐熙娣) — giggled that she would bare her breasts for Wang, a less-than-subtle hint that she wants to star in one of the director’s movies.
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 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 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 older you get, and the more obsessed with your health, the more it feels as if life comes down to numbers: how many more years you can expect; your lean body mass; your percentage of visceral fat; how dense your bones are; how many kilos you can squat; how long you can deadhang; how often you still do it; your levels of LDL and HDL cholesterol; your resting heart rate; your overnight blood oxygen level; how quickly you can run; how many steps you do in a day; how many hours you sleep; how fast you are shrinking; how
RSS