A kiss wasn’t just a kiss for Chinese fans of Alan Luo (羅志祥), aka Little Pig (小豬), who has been in Hangzhou filming the CTS drama series Hi My Sweetheart (海派甜心).
Admirers watching the shoot got into a tizzy during one scene in which co-star Rainie Yang (楊丞琳) forces Luo into a passionate kiss. Some of the 40 fans “wailed” and started to cry as they watched Yang plant her lips upon Luo’s. The reaction startled Yang, who tried to assure the distressed fans by telling them, “We’re just like siblings, please
don’t misunderstand.”
But it took Little Pig to bring about quiet on the set. “Be good,” he said. “Your husband [honey] (老公) is filming right now. You can’t get upset with Rainie over this.”
That soothed his admirers, who obediently fell silent, but not Yang. She was visibly “frightened” and made sure to apologize to the fans before later kissing scenes, according to the Taipei Times’ sister paper, the Liberty Times.
Rumors have resurfaced of a romance between actress and high society belle Terri Kwan (關穎) and pop star heartthrob Jerry Yan (言承旭), as the two were reported to have spent a romantic getaway in Koh Samui last week.
Mobbed by reporters at Taoyuan International Airport last weekend, Yan only smiled when asked if he and Kwan had “secretly met” in Thailand. Yan and Kwan’s managers also dodged similar questions.
Speculation has see-sawed about a Yan-Kwan relationship ever since the two met at the beginning of the year as co-stars of the TV drama series Starlit (心星的淚光). A Liberty Times report speculated that Koh Samui was a “reconciliation” trip after a supposed break-up in June that culminated in a heated quarrel in Yan’s car.
This wouldn’t be Kwan’s first hot-and-cold relationship. She dated male model Jerry Huang (黃志瑋) for more than four years before their romance fizzled in the midst of ongoing reports that her wealthy parents were urging her to find a partner with a more respectable pedigree.
As for Yan, who knows? The Liberty Times noted that he made a recent television appearance where he spoke at length about “a love letter never sent” to another rumored flame, supermodel Lin Chih-ling (林志玲).
It looks like hot-headed crooner Gary Tsao (曹格) has been at it again. Last Friday, the Malaysian Mando-pop star was reportedly banned from the posh Traders Hotel in Kuala Lumpur for smashing a television in a fit of rage during his stay there.
But at least Kuala Lumpur didn’t get it as bad as Hong Kong, where Tsao got blind drunk and beat the daylights out of his friend, Canto-pop singer Justin Lo (側田), during a night out on the town. The bad publicity forced Tsao to cancel a string of upcoming concerts and Hong Kong police are investigating the incident.
As for the smashed TV, Tsao’s manager has denied the story, while an exasperated Tsao remarked that even in Malaysia, “people were out to get me.”
In other news, the Chairman has died — once again, in a rumor.
A tipster pointed the Liberty Times to a Facebook group page with a discussion thread title
that read: “Indonesian media reports that Jay Chou (周杰倫) has died in a foreign country from a drug overdose.”
While it is true that Chou is in a foreign country, says his record label JVR, he’s alive and well in the US filming The Green Hornet, in which he plays the role of Kato.
The hoaxers were only slightly more imaginative this time. The first time Chou supposedly died was in 2004, when a Chinese Web site claimed that the pop star had been run over by a truck.
And it’s official — A-mei (阿妹) is dating. At least according to the Apple Daily, which finally caught the pop diva and her boyfriend of three years, basketball star Sam Ho (何守正) on their first “public” date. One of the paper’s crack photographers managed to sneak his lens into the couple’s private dining room at a Japanese bar and grill in Taipei’s East District.
Ho spotted the camera, and perhaps his basketball skills came in handy, as he promptly used his body to completely block A-mei from the view of the lens. The Apple Daily report noted how sweet and considerate Ho was for “protecting his flower.”
It is jarring how differently Taiwan’s politics is portrayed in the international press compared to the local Chinese-language press. Viewed from abroad, Taiwan is seen as a geopolitical hotspot, or “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth,” as the Economist once blazoned across their cover. Meanwhile, tasked with facing down those existential threats, Taiwan’s leaders are dying their hair pink. These include former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), among others. They are demonstrating what big fans they are of South Korean K-pop sensations Blackpink ahead of their concerts this weekend in Kaohsiung.
Taiwan is one of the world’s greatest per-capita consumers of seafood. Whereas the average human is thought to eat around 20kg of seafood per year, each Taiwanese gets through 27kg to 35kg of ocean delicacies annually, depending on which source you find most credible. Given the ubiquity of dishes like oyster omelet (蚵仔煎) and milkfish soup (虱目魚湯), the higher estimate may well be correct. By global standards, let alone local consumption patterns, I’m not much of a seafood fan. It’s not just a matter of taste, although that’s part of it. What I’ve read about the environmental impact of the
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The captain of the giant Royal Navy battleship called his officers together to give them a first morsel of one of World War II’s most closely guarded secrets: Prepare yourselves, he said, for “an extremely important task.” “Speculations abound,” one of the officers wrote in his diary that day — June 2, 1944. “Some say a second front, some say we are to escort the Soviets, or doing something else around Iceland. No one is allowed ashore.” The secret was D-Day — the June 6, 1944, invasion of Nazi-occupied France with the world’s largest-ever sea, land and air armada. It punctured Adolf
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