Damage control was the name of the game this past week for several Taiwanese celebrities.
Ethan Ruan (阮經天), star of the hit gangster flick Monga (艋舺), found himself in a tough spot with his girlfriend, model Tiffany Hsu (許瑋甯), after being spotted at a hotel in Taichung with an unidentified woman last weekend.
According to a play-by-play of events in Apple Daily, Ruan was spotted checking into the Windsor Hotel (裕元花園酒店) at 6am on Sunday, accompanied by a “long-haired young lady around 160cm tall.” He checked out at 1pm, paying for the room under his own name and credit card.
As soon as the news broke, Ruan explained that the companion was his “friend’s girlfriend,” and insisted the two had slept in separate rooms — they stayed in a two-room suite — and that the boyfriend arrived later on. Ruan said he was out at a lounge bar with a group of friends and some of them decided to stay at the hotel because it was too late to return home.
Besides, he said, “if I really wanted to do something [unfaithful], would I be so stupid to use my own name and credit card?”
That stumbling response probably didn’t help. Hsu didn’t speak to the media at first, only hinting at her mood on Facebook by changing her relationship status from “In a relationship” to “It’s complicated.”
A day later, however, she put on a brave face and told reporters she believed her beau had been faithful and that all of the people involved were friends. For his part, Ruan said that it was a mistake not to return home and that Hsu was his “everything.”
But that wasn’t good enough for Apple Daily, which seems to be trying to hint at a replacement for Ruan: Taiwanese American hearthrob Van Ness Wu (吳建豪). The paper made light of the fact that the two are friends and have been frequent collaborators as of late: They co-starred in a popular TV soap opera, and Hsu featured in one of Wu’s music videos.
Wu probably won’t be biting that apple, though. As a recent convert to Christianity, he swore off his wild days and signed a “celibacy card” in 2008. He did make an offer to Hsu, though, offering to “help her pray.”
Mando-pop big daddy and actor Jay Chou (周杰倫) has had a rough start in 2010. His latest project, Pandamen (熊貓人), a television series about two heroic pandas that protect a city, has flopped both in Taiwan and China.
And rumors about his past romances have been spinning out of control. Just before the Lunar New Year holiday, Next Magazine claimed in a report that Chou’s past flame, Patty Hou (侯佩岑), was a virgin, which prompted unwelcome media attention in the Chairman’s direction. The hoopla was fed by a ridiculing song by rapper Dog G (大支).
Around the same time, Chou’s former label mate, female pop singer Devin Wu (吳佩珊), claimed that she gave up her virginity to Chou when she was 16 years old, in an interview on the popular talk show Here Comes Kang and Xi (康熙來了).
The news dogged Chou at a promotional event for Pandamen last weekend, where he condemned the rumors surrounding Hou: “It wasn’t me who said such things, it was likely an outsider just making something up.” As for Wu’s claim, he wondered out loud to reporters whether she “had gone crazy” and speculated that she had been pressured by TV producers to exaggerate her story.
What Pop Stop finds most interesting is how Dog G appears to have gotten under the Chairman’s skin with a freestyle rap released on the Internet (www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNsJRE3NBZ8), which prompted Chou to call the underground rapper the “scum
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