Chinese-language media report that singer and racing driver Jimmy Lin (林志穎) has become a father. Girlfriend Chen Ruo-yi (陳若儀) gave birth to a son earlier this week in California, and a story in the United Daily News suggests that although the parents are, er, keeping mum about the illegitimate child, Lin will acknowledge paternity following the end of his current concert tour.
It is perhaps no coincidence that his soon-to-be-released album’s title translates as “low-profile love” (低調愛).
The vernacular media have been uncharacteristically backward in coming forward: the news that one of the Chinese-speaking world’s most eligible bachelors has a girlfriend and child hardly created a stir.
The fact that Andy Lau (劉德華) managed to retain his fan base despite being “outed” as a family man has likely paved the way for a younger generation of male celebrities to be more up front about their private lives.
Does this mean the rabid media scrum is exercising a modicum of self-restraint?
Not likely ...
The ubiquity of digital photography proved fertile ground for celebrity gossip this past week. While none of the following beat Edison Chen’s (陳冠希) magnum opus, a number of celebrities have been caught with their proverbial pants down.
Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒), based on a photo “provided by a reader” published in the United Daily News, is dating TV actor Lee Wei (李威). The damning and irrefutable evidence is a shot of Lee draping his arm round Hsiao’s shoulder. Both parties vehemently deny being an item.
In a different league, photos posted on the Internet may cause graver problems for Jamie Weng (翁家明).
Reports in March had Weng’s marriage to actress Grace Yu (俞小凡) on the rocks after revelations surfaced that he was having an affair with flight attendant Su Chia-man (蘇家漫). He subsequently flew to Shanghai where Yu was filming to beg forgiveness, and promised to stop playing away from home. Following a tip from a reader, who suggested that Weng had failed to keep his promise, diligent staffers at Next Magazine uncovered a photo of Weng and Su striking a pose of undisguised intimacy posted on Picasa. According to the magazine, the photo was posted at the end of last month.
Next Magazine laments that following these revelations, Weng has been keeping a low profile, which adds to the challenge of verifying the rumors, in the interests of truth.
Yu could exact revenge by hooking up with Chang Cheng-yue (張震嶽), who is back in play after splitting up from Miranda Lu (路嘉怡). Chang has been busy with a super group comprising venerable rockers Lo Ta-yu (羅大佑), Emil Chou (周華健) and Jonathan Lee (李宗盛), which has proved a shrewd move financially. He’s already made headlines by dating an unnamed woman who has been nicknamed “big-eyed chick” (大眼妹) by Next Magazine.
After breaking up with “foreign boyfriend” Paul soon after the release of her English album Self-Selected, Faith Yang (楊乃文) seems to have hitched up with David Wu (吳大維), a man whose list of former relationships reads like a who’s who of Taiwan’s celebrity firmament. Yang may face competition in the form of glamour model Hsiang Ying (湘瑩), who Next Magazine reports has been recently sighted with Wu.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
Toward the outside edge of Taichung City, in Wufeng District (霧峰去), sits a sprawling collection of single-story buildings with tiled roofs belonging to the Wufeng Lin (霧峰林家) family, who rose to prominence through success in military, commercial, and artistic endeavors in the 19th century. Most of these buildings have brick walls and tiled roofs in the traditional reddish-brown color, but in the middle is one incongruous property with bright white walls and a black tiled roof: Yipu Garden (頤圃). Purists may scoff at the Japanese-style exterior and its radical departure from the Fujianese architectural style of the surrounding buildings. However, the property
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