As dull as it may sound, marriage is the keyword in this week’s gossip rags, as a bevy of female stars are rumored to be either getting engaged or are ready to enter a state of matrimony. The one that sounds most genuine involves celebrity sweetheart Patty Hou (侯佩岑), who has not been coy about gossip journos’ inquiries about her engagement party last Friday.
The paparazzi from Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) and Apple Daily quickly published reports profiling Hou’s fiance; on Wednesday. His name is Ken Huang (黃伯俊). He is 35 years old, resembles Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒) slightly and makes an annual income of more than NT$12 million at Citigroup Global Markets Inc. However, the two rival newspapers have yet to agree on whether or not the man in question is an heir to family assets worth tens of billions of NT dollars. A positive answer will definitely make the modern-day fairy tale more dreamy: A beautiful woman lives happily ever after with her prince charming and his moneybags
Gossip hounds should already know about the three-carat engagement ring that Huang gave to Hou after they had been seeing each other for just four months, as well as Huang’s rumored romance with actress Ruby Lin (林心如).
Apart from the report of the Huang-Hou pairing, other nuptial news flashes have been rigorously denied by the parties involved. Did Maggie Cheung (張曼玉) become engaged to her German architect boyfriend Ole Scheeren on Christmas Eve? The 45-year-old actress’s agent says no. But gossip insiders assert the couple will get hitched soon.
How about the engagement party celebrating the union of veteran belle Rosamund Kwan (關之琳) of Hong Kong and Taiwan’s IT tycoon Pierre Chen (陳泰銘) held last Saturday? Never happened? And anyway, Chen was still married last time local paparazzi checked. As for Hong Kong’s former diva Cherie Chung (鍾楚紅), the 49-year-old widow personally denied the speculation about her upcoming wedding with a certain wealthy businessman from Singapore.
While Hou has found her Mr Right, Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) is getting cozy with fast-rising model Godfrey Kao (高以翔), whose previous claim to fame was his pair of delectable pinkish nipples, which he flagrantly exposed in his photo book. It’s only a matter of time before intimate comparisons will be made between Kao and Tsai’s old flame Jay Chou (周杰倫).
So what is the Mando-pop king, self-made film director and occasional actor doing with his love life? Not much. Unless you count the banter and teasing exchanges between him and supermodel-turned-actress Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) during the promotions for the fantasy adventure The Treasure Hunter (刺陵).
The way Pop Stop sees it, the real-life flirting between the two is more convincing that the on-screen romance that they share in the movie, which was killed by the embarrassingly coy lines and dumb jokes that filled the clunky script.
Finally, model-turned-housewife Hung Hsiao-lei (洪曉蕾) and her CEO-husband Wang Shih-chun (王世均) offer an example of a dreamy celebrity marriage gone sour. An outburst of violence erupted on Christmas Eve when a young man accidentally bumped into an inebriated Wang at a Cash Box KTV (錢櫃) outlet. According to a witness, Wang then beat the man to the ground with a beer can and kicked one of the man’s female friends in the head while shouting “don’t you know who I am.” Wang apologized afterwards and no charges were brought against him.
One month earlier, a widely circulated rumor claimed that there had been incidents of spousal abuse between the model couple, though both parties have denied the accusation.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist