Unless you’ve been living underneath a rock inside a cave on a lonely desert island in the middle of the ocean, you’ve probably heard of Lin Yu-chun (林育群). Hailed by the world’s media as the next Susan Boyle, the portly, bow tie-wearing 24-year-old with a bowl haircut became a YouTube sensation overnight after he performed a Whitney Houston-like rendition of I Will Always Love You on One Million Star (超級星光大道) earlier this month.
Since then “Little Fatty” (小胖), as he calls himself, has been covered by CNN, the BBC, the Daily Mail, the USA Today, the New York Times and Agence France-Presse, just to name a few.
Even though Lin was eliminated from the competition on last week’s show, he has been courted by several record companies and will reportedly release his first album by the end of this year.
Lin’s newfound fame may have already gone to his head. According to Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), his agent cancelled a press interview a few hours before the scheduled time last Friday only to call reporters back to take photographs of Lin at the musical instrument shop where he works. This behavior irked the papers’ gossip journos, who say Lin is a neophyte with the attitude of an A-lister.
It’s time again for another round of Celebrity Drug Bust. Disgraced entertainer Da Bing (大炳) has been arrested on drug-related charges for the third time, this time for alleged possession of amphetamines and heroin at his apartment in Sijhih, Taipei County, on Monday. Local papers said when police broke into the room, the cross-dressing performer, whose real name is Yu Bing-hsian (余炳賢), knelt on the floor and cried, “I’m screwed!” Also at the scene, according to the reports, were his boyfriend Li Kuang-chih (李光智), alleged drug dealer Liu Chang-chih (劉昌志) and Liu’s girlfriend Wu Chih-hsiang (吳芝香).
The erstwhile funnyman was collared for using amphetamines in 2007 and 2009 and took indefinite leave from local showbiz after his second arrest.
Da Bing reportedly denied using the heroin found at his place, but in front of a media scrum late Monday night he burst into tears and said, “Please don’t have faith in me anymore. I don’t deserve this attention.”
Why are the police always busting celebs like Da Bing and Suzanne Hsiao (蕭淑慎) when there are plenty of other people using drugs at any given moment all over Taipei? One theory is that celebrity caners are too dumb to take measures to avoid getting caught. The other is that they are easy targets and a guaranteed source of good publicity for law enforcement.
Police say they were chasing Liu and Wu, not Da Bing.
Also crying on TV this week was basketball player Chen Jien-chow (陳建州), better known as Blackie (黑人), accused by Next Magazine of pocketing money from his Love Life charity drive. The report claimed that the charity was hawking T-shirts for NT$580, of which only NT$100 per shirt went to terminally ill children with cancer and the rest to Blackie.
Blackie broke down in front of media on Wednesday and explained tearfully that the extra money was used to cover costs for the event.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built