Awards ceremonies in Taiwan — whether of the beauty pageant, music, television or film variety — are generally occasions for jealousy, name-calling and all around caterwauling. So it was with some surprise that there was little controversy reported at this year’s Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎), presented on Saturday night. The awards are considered the Chinese-language equivalent of the Oscars.
Taiwan’s Leon Dai (戴立忍), who garnered five awards for his No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti (不能沒有你), a black-and-white film about a father down on his luck who struggles to retain custody of his daughter, was the biggest news.
More important for gossip observers, however, was the hug Dai gave actress Guey Lun-mei (桂綸鎂), when she presented him with the award for Best Screenplay.
Dai, 43, and Guey, 26, have been rumored to be lovers for years, but kept their relationship under wraps. Under the microscopic scrutiny of gossip rags, a hug comes with a lot of significance (or at least a pretext for reporters to write whatever they want).
So tongues started wagging on Saturday night when the two embraced — for the first time in public, reported the Apple Daily.
As Dai walked off stage, one wag asked about the hug. “Especially warm (特別溫暖),” he replied. Which logically, for this paparazzo, led to a question about marriage. Dai responded with a shrug and a laugh.
The Liberty Times speculated that the age difference between the two celebs prevents them from going public with the relationship.
And speaking of leaps of logic, Apple was making a few of its own when it snapped pictures of sometimes-entertainer Allen Chao (趙樹海) and model Sonia Sui (隋棠) having dinner, in a report which suggested that the Chao is keeping love in the family.
Chao is the father of Mark Chao (趙又廷), who stars with Sui in the cop drama Black & White (痞子英雄). The two young actors have filmed a couple of love scenes together.
When asked if Chao knew that Sui was dating actor Yao Yuan-hao (姚元浩), he angrily responded,“Whether or not she has a boyfriend, it’s not my business. I’m her elder.” To which Sui added, “He is my father and I am his daughter.”
Meanwhile, netizens are giving TV host and pop singer Pauline Lan (藍心湄) a hard time, according to an Apple report. And it’s not over the 45-year-old’s notorious affairs with younger men. They claim that the outfit Lan wore for a photo shoot shown on TVBS and published in the Apple Daily was nearly identical to the mostly see-through costume worn by Britney Spears in her video Toxic.
But Lan’s “outfit,” which consists of a few strategically placed crystals, in the snaps — which look like the product of an epic Photoshop session — makes Britney’s Toxic duds look practically Amish by comparison.
“I just want to show audiences what the body of a 45-year-old woman looks like,” she said. “Are my breasts okay?”
Further up the cup-size alphabet, television host Chen Jin-pei (陳今佩) has lost 39kg in the past two years (and went from an H cup to an E). The 58 year-old, known in the entertainment world as the “Great White Shark” (大白鯊), told reporters that she trimmed down for a love interest in China.
Pop Stop wonders if Chen will take a leaf out of Taiwanese actress Vivian Hsu (徐若瑄) flab-fight book.
While on the set of the film Hot Summer Days (全城熱戀), which is set to hit theaters in February, Hsu found a way to rid herself of the copious amounts of sushi she was forced to eat for her role as a love-struck heiress, reported Sina.com.
“I didn’t want to gain weight. So when the director stopped filming, I’d throw up the sushi,” she said.
By global standards, the traffic congestion that afflicts Taiwan’s urban areas isn’t horrific. But nor is it something the country can be proud of. According to TomTom, a Dutch developer of location and navigation technologies, last year Taiwan was the sixth most congested country in Asia. Of the 492 towns and cities included in its rankings last year, Taipei was the 74th most congested. Taoyuan ranked 105th, while Hsinchu County (121st), Taichung (142nd), Tainan (173rd), New Taipei City (227th), Kaohsiung (241st) and Keelung (302nd) also featured on the list. Four Japanese cities have slower traffic than Taipei. (Seoul, which has some
Michael slides a sequin glove over the pop star’s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson’s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great. Antoine Fuqua’s movie is sanctioned by Jackson’s estate and its producers include the estate’s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film ends before the flood of allegations of sexual abuse of children, or Jackson’s own acknowledgment of sleeping alongside kids. Jackson and his estate have long maintained his innocence. In his only criminal trial, in 2005, Jackson was acquitted. Michael doesn’t even subtly nod to these facts.
Writing of the finds at the ancient iron-working site of Shihsanhang (十 三行) in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里), archaeologist Tsang Cheng-hwa (臧振華) of the Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology observes: “One bronze bowl gilded with gold, together with copper coins and fragments of Tang and Song ceramics, were also found. These provide evidence for early contact between Taiwan aborigines and Chinese.” The Shihsanhang Web site from the Ministry of Culture says of the finds: “They were evidence that the residents of the area had a close trading relation with Chinese civilians, as the coins can be
During her 2015 trip to Taiwan, Sophia J. Chang (張詠慧) got fewer answers than she’d hoped for, but more revelations than she could have imagined. “That was the year I last saw my grandmother. She was in hospice care in Tainan, and it was painful to see her in bed, barely able to open her eyes,” says Los Angeles-born Chang. “The grandma I’d known, a fantastic cook and incredibly kind, was already gone.” After their visit, Chang and her grandfather went back to his apartment. There she asked him how he’d met her grandmother. “He hesitated, then started talking a bit.
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