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.”
Towering high above Taiwan’s capital city at 508 meters, Taipei 101 dominates the skyline. The earthquake-proof skyscraper of steel and glass has captured the imagination of professional rock climber Alex Honnold for more than a decade. Tomorrow morning, he will climb it in his signature free solo style — without ropes or protective equipment. And Netflix will broadcast it — live. The event’s announcement has drawn both excitement and trepidation, as well as some concerns over the ethical implications of attempting such a high-risk endeavor on live broadcast. Many have questioned Honnold’s desire to continues his free-solo climbs now that he’s a
As Taiwan’s second most populous city, Taichung looms large in the electoral map. Taiwanese political commentators describe it — along with neighboring Changhua County — as Taiwan’s “swing states” (搖擺州), which is a curious direct borrowing from American election terminology. In the early post-Martial Law era, Taichung was referred to as a “desert of democracy” because while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was winning elections in the north and south, Taichung remained staunchly loyal to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). That changed over time, but in both Changhua and Taichung, the DPP still suffers from a “one-term curse,” with the
Jan. 26 to Feb. 1 Nearly 90 years after it was last recorded, the Basay language was taught in a classroom for the first time in September last year. Over the following three months, students learned its sounds along with the customs and folktales of the Ketagalan people, who once spoke it across northern Taiwan. Although each Ketagalan settlement had its own language, Basay functioned as a common trade language. By the late 19th century, it had largely fallen out of daily use as speakers shifted to Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), surviving only in fragments remembered by the elderly. In
Lines between cop and criminal get murky in Joe Carnahan’s The Rip, a crime thriller set across one foggy Miami night, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Damon and Affleck, of course, are so closely associated with Boston — most recently they produced the 2024 heist movie The Instigators there — that a detour to South Florida puts them, a little awkwardly, in an entirely different movie landscape. This is Miami Vice territory or Elmore Leonard Land, not Southie or The Town. In The Rip, they play Miami narcotics officers who come upon a cartel stash house that Lt. Dane Dumars (Damon)
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