Fledging actor Mark Chao (趙又廷) played the ungrateful son in this week’s tabloids, with his semi-retired entertainer father Allen Chao (趙樹海) in the role of the overbearing father. It all started when the younger Chao was named Best Actor for his role in popular police drama Black & White (痞子英雄) at the Golden Bell Awards two weeks ago, beating out audience favorite and former F4 member Vic Chou (周渝民), to the surprise and consternation of many in the audience and entertainment media. Rumors have been circulating that the elder Chao had an “innocent chat” with an “old friend” who happened to be a jury member prior to the awards ceremony.
Allen Chao says that isn’t true. But he’s been griping about how his 25-year-old son has turned down jobs for commercials and television shows featuring the father-son duo that Chao Senior had arranged. “I’d be lucky to be seen at all with my son on television these days,” Allen Chao was quoted as saying by the Apple Daily.
Black & White director Tsai Yueh-hsun (蔡岳勳), meanwhile, was cozying up to Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) by throwing a party to thank the city for its support during the shooting of the television drama.
Chen and Tsai announced at the party last week that a movie version of Black & White will be set mostly in Kaohsiung, which Tsai says he hopes will help boost tourism in the southern city.
In another boost for tourism in Kaohsiung, it is estimated that pop-rock outfit Mayday (五月天) will draw more than 7,000 fans from Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore to its sold-out concert scheduled to be held in the city on Dec. 5. According to calculations by local media, the concert will generate NT$150 million for the local economy, cementing Mayday’s role as the new F4, the Taiwanese boy band that had a large following in Asia.
In other music-related news, singer Joanna Wang (王若琳) will reportedly return to the stage in January, just a few months after what was billed as a good-bye concert was held at The Wall (這牆) by Wang, who at the time was said to be returning to the US to resume her education.
Gossip observers suspect the bye-bye gig was a publicity stunt and question whether the 21-year-old singer’s upcoming show is worth NT$10,000 per seat, a price that even by big-name pop stars such as Wang Lee-hom (王力宏) and Aaron Kwok (郭富城) would have a hard time matching.
Wang’s record company Sony Music later explained that the NT$10,000 tickets were for sofa seats for two. But as Wang has been outspoken about her disappointment with Sony Music for making her a sweet, mellow jazz crooner rather than letting her to do what she truly wants, the upcoming concert may very well be an attempt by the record label to cash in on the defiant young star while it still can.
Finally, after months of rumors about pregnancies and miscarriages, Hong Kong paparazzi confirmed last week that Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) is pregnant with twins.
The actress and mother of one was reportedly trying to have a child again with husband Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒) to save their marriage in the wake of her star turn in the Edison Chen (陳冠希) sex photo scandal.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby