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.
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry consumes electricity at rates that would strain most national grids. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) alone accounted for more than 9 percent, or 2,590 megawatts (MW), of the nation’s power demand last year. The factories that produce chips for the world’s phones and servers run around the clock. They cannot tolerate blackouts. Yet Taiwan imports 97 percent of its energy, with liquefied natural gas reserves measured in days. Underground, Taiwan has options. Studies from National Taiwan University estimate recoverable geothermal resources at more than 33,000 MW. Current installed capacity stands below 10 MW. OBSTACLES Despite Taiwan’s significant geothermal potential, the
In our discussions of tourism in Taiwan we often criticize the government’s addiction to promoting food and shopping, while ignoring Taiwan’s underdeveloped trekking and adventure travel opportunities. This discussion, however, is decidedly land-focused. When was the last time a port entered into it? Last week I encountered journalist and travel writer Cameron Dueck, who had sailed to Taiwan in 2023-24, and was full of tales. Like everyone who visits, he and his partner Fiona Ching loved our island nation and had nothing but wonderful experiences on land. But he had little positive to say about the way Taiwan has organized its
The entire Li Zhenxiu (李貞秀) saga has been an ugly, complicated mess. Born in China’s Hunan Province, she moved to work in Shenzhen, where she met her future Taiwanese husband. Most accounts have her arriving in Taiwan and marrying somewhere between 1993 and 1999. She built a successful career in Taiwan in the tech industry before founding her own company. She also served in high-ranking positions on various environmentally-focused tech associations. She says she was inspired by the founding of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in 2019 by Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), and began volunteering for the party soon after. Ko
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) returned from her trip to meet People’s Republic of China (PRC) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) bearing “a gift” for the people of Taiwan: 10 measures the PRC proposed to “facilitate the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.” “China on Sunday unveiled 10 new incentive measures for Taiwan,” wrote Reuters, wrongly. The PRC’s longstanding habit with Taiwan relations is to repackage already extant or once-existing policies and declare that they are “new.” The list forwarded by Cheng reflects that practice. NEW MEASURES? Note the first item: establishing regular communication mechanisms between the Chinese Communist Party
RSS