Sparks continue to fly over a rumored romance between singer Jay Chou (周杰倫) and model Lin Chi-ling (林志玲), co-stars of the recently released film The Treasure Hunter (刺陵). The two were spotted together by Next Magazine several weeks ago on a late night outing at a hot pot restaurant on Civil Boulevard (市民大道). Reports have also circulated on the Internet of a Chou-Lin sighting at Shilin night market (士林夜市).
Fueling speculation even further was a birthday ode to Chou (who just turned 31) written by his close friend and fellow pop singer Devon Song (彈頭). On his blog, Song posted an eight-line poem in Mandarin which sneaks in a vague reference to Lin: The poem was written to be read from left to right, but the first character of each line also forms a sentence, which reads, “Director Chou is fucking cool, Chi-ling knows it.” (周導好屌，志玲知道.)
But it seems Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) can’t be left out of the picture when it comes to “The Chairman,” at least on the gossip pages. Just last weekend, Chou and his former sweetheart reportedly went on a bowling date — a development that has left observers “in the dark,” as our sister paper, The Liberty Times, put it.
As for one of Lin’s past flames, pop heartthrob Jerry Yan (言承旭) has been dodging questions as usual regarding romance. Yan, who was last rumored to be dating actress Terri Kwan (關穎) but supposedly still holds a candle for Lin, recently made an appearance on Variety Big Brother (綜藝大哥大) — but not without a fuss.
According to the Liberty Times, the taping of the show was delayed by Yan’s management, which insisted that host Chang Fei (張菲) refrain from asking questions about his love life. Chang relented, but lightly prodded Yan on the show: “[Jerry], this is the first time that as a host, I’ve been restricted from asking certain questions.”
The reporters on the set, on the other hand, didn’t let Yan off the hook. They grilled him on the Chou-Lin rumors. “I’ve heard about it,” he replied with a “rigid” smile. Had he seen the The Treasure Hunter? “It’s actually a good movie.”
A movie that’s actually good, James Cameron’s hit Avatar, is getting trumped in China by Confucius (孔子). Chinese authorities have told theaters across the country to pull the sci-fi epic to make way for a biopic on the venerated philosopher starring Chow Yun-fat (周潤發). The Apple Daily reports that high-level Chinese officials have been concerned that local films would lose market share to Avatar, which opened at the beginning of the month and is already the highest-grossing movie in Chinese film history, having earned US$76 million thus far. But all is not lost for our friends across the strait, who can still see the 3D IMAX version, which has yet to be pulled from theaters.
Meanwhile, Taiwanese Internet users have been feeding their craze for Avatar by drawing comparisons between Neytiri, the film’s lead female character, with several pop singers, according to another Apple Daily report. Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒) was in the running for the best look-a-like, but Angela Chang (張韶涵) took the prize with her “eye-to-nose ratio.”
Ouyang Fei-fei (歐陽菲菲), the Taiwan-born singer who found stardom in Japan as a disco diva, will be appearing at Taipei Arena (台北小巨蛋) tomorrow night. The 55-year-old, who sports a Tina Turner-esque hairdo and is sometimes called the Taiwanese Cher, shared with the Liberty Times the secret to maintaining her svelte figure: everyday she does 30 minutes of “exercise in bed” (床上運動) — that is, leg lifts and waist twists.
And perhaps to prove that she also remains young at heart, Ouyang has been rehearsing Madonna’s Like a Virgin as part of the Western pop segment of her show. But the song is not really her, she says. “I can’t sing something so restrained, I’m too wild.”
Taiwan has next to no political engagement in Myanmar, either with the ruling military junta nor the dozens of armed groups who’ve in the last five years taken over around two-thirds of the nation’s territory in a sprawling, patchwork civil war. But early last month, the leader of one relatively minor Burmese revolutionary faction, General Nerdah Bomya, who is also an alleged war criminal, made a low key visit to Taipei, where he met with a member of President William Lai’s (賴清德) staff, a retired Taiwanese military official and several academics. “I feel like Taiwan is a good example of
March 2 to March 8 Gunfire rang out along the shore of the frontline island of Lieyu (烈嶼) on a foggy afternoon on March 7, 1987. By the time it was over, about 20 unarmed Vietnamese refugees — men, women, elderly and children — were dead. They were hastily buried, followed by decades of silence. Months later, opposition politicians and journalists tried to uncover what had happened, but conflicting accounts only deepened the confusion. One version suggested that government troops had mistakenly killed their own operatives attempting to return home from Vietnam. The military maintained that the
“M yeolgong jajangmyeon (anti-communism zhajiangmian, 滅共炸醬麵), let’s all shout together — myeolgong!” a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Dongtan, located about 35km south of Seoul, South Korea, calls out before serving a bowl of Korean-style zhajiangmian —black bean noodles. Diners repeat the phrase before tucking in. This political-themed restaurant, named Myeolgong Banjeom (滅共飯館, “anti-communism restaurant”), is operated by a single person and does not take reservations; therefore long queues form regularly outside, and most customers appear sympathetic to its political theme. Photos of conservative public figures hang on the walls, alongside political slogans and poems written in Chinese characters; South
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) announced last week a city policy to get businesses to reduce working hours to seven hours per day for employees with children 12 and under at home. The city promised to subsidize 80 percent of the employees’ wage loss. Taipei can do this, since the Celestial Dragon Kingdom (天龍國), as it is sardonically known to the denizens of Taiwan’s less fortunate regions, has an outsize grip on the government budget. Like most subsidies, this will likely have little effect on Taiwan’s catastrophic birth rates, though it may be a relief to the shrinking number of
RSS