Supermodel Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) is getting an image makeover with her role in Treasure Hunter (刺陵), a big-budget action flick scheduled to open next week. This is her second role in a feature movie. Clearly Lin is making the right kind of moves because Treasure Hunter stars Jay Chou (周杰倫), features a high-profile cast including Eric Tsang (曾志偉) and Chen Dao-ming (陳道明) and is directed by Kung Fu Dunk (功夫灌籃) director Chu Yin-ping (朱延平). This is a significant shift from Lin’s previous role as Xiao Qiao in John Woo’s (吳宇森) Red Cliff (赤壁). In Treasure Hunter, Lin casts off her demur demeanor and takes up sword and spear in a martial role akin to that of Angelina Jolie’s Laura Croft.
At a press conference in Singapore to promote the film, Lin said that she gave herself a seven out of 10 for her performance. Lin garnered mixed reviews for her presence in Red Cliff, but on this occasion she has certainly impressed other cast members, including Chou, with her energy and eagerness to learn. The United Daily News quoted Chou as saying: “When a beautiful woman fights, it looks good no matter what. That’s the important point.” Perhaps Chou wasn’t being so complimentary about Lin’s talent after all. Lin also took it upon herself to write the lyrics for the film’s theme song. Chou, who composed the music, dispensed with the services of Vincent Fang (方文山), the much sought-after lyricist, after seeing Lin’s efforts. “Next time we won’t have to book Fang,” Chou said. “He always has so much work on hand.”
With Treasure Hunter, Chou’s bid to make it in the movie business, on both sides of the camera, is clearly being established. Another singer who has dabbled in acting — and who now wants to take the director’s chair — is Wang Lee-hom (王力宏). According to the United Daily News, Wang has quietly begun shooting in China for a new feature film and has received support and advice from mentors Ang Lee (李安) and Jackie Chan (成龍). Chan’s own new feature film Big Soldiers (大兵小將), staring Wang, is scheduled for release early next year. In regard to his directorial style, Wang said he wanted to be a director like Ang Lee, someone who didn’t have to resort to shouting at people on set. “I’m not very good at telling people off,” he was quoted as saying.
Wang — once regarded as one of the hottest men in the Chinese-language entertainment industry — is nowhere to be seen in the Apple Daily’s poll of best looking men, with heartthrob Vic Chou (周渝民) of boy band F4 fame taking the top spot. Singer Jerry Yan (言承旭) took second place, and Ethan Ruan (阮經天) third. Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武) placed fourth. The 36-year-old actor is doing well to have kept his place in the top five lookers despite his age. Fifth place went to Mark Chao (趙又廷) of the recent hit cop shop series Black & White (痞子英雄).
On the romantic front, Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) is back on the prowl and Next Magazine reports that following her traumatic breakup with Eddie Peng (彭于晏), she has picked up with model Godfrey Kao (高以翔). According to Next, Kao is keeping a low profile on his conquest as Tsai’s former boyfriend Peng is a buddy. This hasn’t prevented the paparazzi from catching the two flagrantly trying to avoid public scrutiny by leaving various nightspots surreptitiously, and by different exits.
Ajay Verma, a consultant gastroenterologist at Kettering general hospital in Northamptonshire, says our gut is a “complex machine.” “It is constantly providing us with the nutrition we need, initially to grow and develop, and then for us to survive, thrive and repair from injury and illness.” How can we keep it functioning well? Put simply: “Make sure what you put into it is balanced, and that you clear out its waste products adequately,” Verma says. “In a general gastroenterology clinic, the most common conditions we see are irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), gastroesophageal reflux disease, inflammatory bowel disease and constipation,” says Nisha
And so, in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all the experts on the Strait of Hormuz suddenly became experts on US-China-Taiwan relations. The Internet has certainly expanded human knowledge. Lots of these sudden experts made noise this week about Trump’s words after the meeting with PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平). Trump is going to sell out Taiwan! Longtime Taiwan commentator J. Michael Cole summed the situation up neatly in the Guardian: “We need to keep in mind that he has a tendency to say many things — sometimes contradicting himself within
Last week US President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter whether he would speak on the phone to the President of Taiwan. “l’ll speak to him. I speak to everybody. We have that situation very well in hand,” Trump said. This marked the second time in a couple of weeks he had said he would talk to the President of Taiwan. In 2016 he famously took a call from then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), when he was president-elect. Despite warnings that the apocalypse was nigh because of a phone call, the world quickly forgot about the conversation between two democratically-elected presidents.
May 25 to May 31 Few believed that apples could be cultivated on a commercial scale in Taiwan’s high mountains. When horticulturalist Cheng Chao-hsiung (程兆熊) first proposed the idea in 1955, both American and Taiwanese colleagues dismissed it as implausible, arguing that temperate fruit could not be reliably grown on a subtropical island, especially on rugged terrain. However, it was this terrain in the Central Mountain Range where many Chinese Civil War veterans were resettled in the late 1950s. With limited job prospects and no family in Taiwan, they were placed on cooperative farms aimed toward self-sufficiency. Some say the conditions
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