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.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
By far the most jarring of the new appointments for the incoming administration is that of Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) to head the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF). That is a huge demotion for one of the most powerful figures in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Tseng has one of the most impressive resumes in the party. He was very active during the Wild Lily Movement and his generation is now the one taking power. He has served in many of the requisite government, party and elected positions to build out a solid political profile. Elected as mayor of Taoyuan as part of the
Moritz Mieg, 22, lay face down in the rubble, the ground shaking violently beneath him. Boulders crashed down around him, some stones hitting his back. “I just hoped that it would be one big hit and over, because I did not want to be hit nearly to death and then have to slowly die,” the student from Germany tells Taipei Times. MORNING WALK Early on April 3, Mieg set out on a scenic hike through Taroko Gorge in Hualien County (花蓮). It was a fine day for it. Little did he know that the complex intersection of tectonic plates Taiwan sits
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50