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.
The canonical shot of an East Asian city is a night skyline studded with towering apartment and office buildings, bright with neon and plastic signage, a landscape of energy and modernity. Another classic image is the same city seen from above, in which identical apartment towers march across the city, spilling out over nearby geography, like stylized soldiers colonizing new territory in a board game. Densely populated dynamic conurbations of money, technological innovation and convenience, it is hard to see the cities of East Asia as what they truly are: necropolises. Why is this? The East Asian development model, with
June 16 to June 22 The following flyer appeared on the streets of Hsinchu on June 12, 1895: “Taipei has already fallen to the Japanese barbarians, who have brought great misery to our land and people. We heard that the Japanese occupiers will tax our gardens, our houses, our bodies, and even our chickens, dogs, cows and pigs. They wear their hair wild, carve their teeth, tattoo their foreheads, wear strange clothes and speak a strange language. How can we be ruled by such people?” Posted by civilian militia leader Wu Tang-hsing (吳湯興), it was a call to arms to retake
This is a deeply unsettling period in Taiwan. Uncertainties are everywhere while everyone waits for a small army of other shoes to drop on nearly every front. During challenging times, interesting political changes can happen, yet all three major political parties are beset with scandals, strife and self-inflicted wounds. As the ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is held accountable for not only the challenges to the party, but also the nation. Taiwan is geopolitically and economically under threat. Domestically, the administration is under siege by the opposition-controlled legislature and growing discontent with what opponents characterize as arrogant, autocratic
When Lisa, 20, laces into her ultra-high heels for her shift at a strip club in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, she knows that aside from dancing, she will have to comfort traumatized soldiers. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, exhausted troops are the main clientele of the Flash Dancers club in the center of the northeastern city, just 20 kilometers from Russian forces. For some customers, it provides an “escape” from the war, said Valerya Zavatska — a 25-year-old law graduate who runs the club with her mother, an ex-dancer. But many are not there just for the show. They “want to talk about what hurts,” she
RSS