Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Wu Yu-sheng’s
(吳育昇) extramarital tryst with
40-something piano teacher Rebecca Sun (孫仲瑜) earlier this month sparked a media frenzy that has
seen TV anchors devoting much of their primetime news slots to yapping on about the matter like rabid Chihuahuas.
Now comes news that Chung Yiu-kwong (鍾耀光), the married director of the Taipei Chinese Orchestra (臺北市立國樂團), has been accused of doing the dirty with Ma Tsui-yu (馬翠妤), a 26-year-old musician with the orchestra.
The two were spotted by shutterbugs from the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) holding hands and cuddling like a couple of young lovebirds in the East District (東區) on Tuesday of last week.
The 52-year-old Chung defended his behavior by saying he was just trying to help ease Ma’s work pressure. Ma was more creative, saying it was only natural for her to snuggle up with her gay friends.
The Liberty Times’ interview with Chung’s wife, Chang Hsin-ni (張欣霓), deserves to be quoted at length.
Reporter: We have photos of your husband dating another woman.
Chang: I think I know who she is.
Reporter: We want to know your opinion.
Chang: I have no opinion. It’s his business.
Reporter: Hmm ... so you know he has a girlfriend?
Chang: Yes, and it’s not the first time.
Reporter: So you don’t care about what he does with other women
anymore?
Chang: That’s right.
In other news, former sex goddess and leading lady of Taiwanese New Wave cinema Lu Hsiao-fen (陸小芬) is returning to the big screen, 17 years after she retired from the movie business. The 53-year-old Golden Horse award-winning actress is set to take the lead in slapstick director Chu Yen-ping’s (朱延平) upcoming black comedy, which was inspired by the 2004 assassination attempt against then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Chu is the first Taiwanese commercial director to tap into the political drama surrounding the incident. Hong Kong director Laurence Lau (劉國昌) first visited the subject with Ballistic (彈道).
On the other side of the Taiwan Strait, Faye Wong (王菲) is reported to be planning a concert tour of China next October. Speculation is rife as to what might be motivating the 40-year-old pop diva’s potential comeback bid, which many gossipmongers attributing the development to a martial crisis.
Crisis or not, with Wong reportedly expected to earn as much as
NT$50 million from the tour, she would certainly enjoy another luxurious break afterwards.
Another semi-retired star on the comeback track is Hong Kong’s Rachel Lee (李麗珍), adored as a pioneering figure in the fields of nude photo books and erotic sanjipian (三級片), the term for restricted films in Hong Kong. The 44-year-old is taking her clothes off again for a weight-loss company’s television commercial after shedding 12kg, giving a younger generation the change to see her 32Cs, which were widely celebrated in the 1990s.
Edison Chen (陳冠希) made a two-day public visit to Taipei last weekend. Chen, whose sex photo scandal roiled the Chinese-language entertainment world and damaged the careers of several actresses two years ago, came in his capacity as the owner of Clot Media Division Limited to promote a limited-edition toy he helped design. Another purpose of the visit was to spread news of the impeding arrival of his street-wear brand Clot, which will open a store in Taipei’s East District next spring.
When asked if he would choose Taiwan as a base for an attempt to return to show business, Chen — who said in a press conference last February that he had “decided to step away from the Hong Kong entertainment industry” to “heal myself and to search my soul” — replied: “I never said I would stop working in Taiwan, so it’s not an issue.” (Before last year’s press conference, Hong Kong crime figures, who are widely believed to play a major role in the city’s film industry, were reportedly offering US$100,000 to anyone who hacked off one of Chen’s hands.)
In music-related news, singer
and television host Harlem Yu (庾澄慶) and his friends have spent a fortune on Legacy Taipei, a new venue for live music located in Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914) (formerly known as Huashan Culture Park, 華山文化園區).
The opening concert is on Dec. 4 and it features Cui Jian (崔健), revered as the father of Chinese rock ’n’ roll. The venue’s Web site is www.legacy.com.tw.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and