Tattletale flames old and “new” have been spewing up grist for the rumor mill over the past week.
Pop idol-turned-B-list actor Wing Fan (范植偉) climbed into bed with the China Times Weekly (時報周刊) for a pillow talk session, the results of which were published two weeks ago, and got more than he bargained for — or maybe not.
Fan reminisced about his past romance with pop idol Cyndi Wang (王心凌), which ended five years ago, and gave her dirty laundry a thorough public airing.
With unusual candor, Fan confessed to subjecting Wang to domestic violence on two occasions. And if that weren’t enough to persuade his most ardent of fans that the man’s a complete cad, when the interviewing journo asked if the two had lost their virginity to one another, seeing as they married young (Fan was 19, Wang 17), Fan replied: “I had two girlfriends before her so it was not my first time. I thought it would be her first time, but it wasn’t. I was a bit disappointed and surprised, because after all she was only 17.”
Wang, acknowledged as the founder of Mando-pop’s Cult of Sweetness (甜心教主), reportedly cried for two days and went into hiding.
In the face of snowballing criticism, Fan cut off contact with the media. But before making a French exit, he publicly apologized to Wang and said that he was gravely mistaken in trusting a reporter during a “casual chat.”
Far be it from Pop Stop to suggest that, with a new album coming out, Fan’s disclosure could be yet another Mando-pop attempt at creating a succes de scandale.
Amid the brouhaha, Wang’s first love, C-list actor Ou Ting-hsing (歐定興), reaped some media exposure. When interviewed by the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), Ou said he had only got to first base with Wang when they dated. And since Wang started seeing her former husband after they broke up, Ou speculated that Wang lost her virginity to Fan.
Meanwhile, starlet Hu Jia-ai (胡嘉愛), who quickly rose from the D-list to gossip rag headline material because of her rumored romantic involvement with pop star Stanley Huang (黃立行) — though he dismissed her as a mere acquaintance — continues to fuel speculation about the pair’s true status.
After Hu claimed on popular television show Here Comes Kang and Xi (康熙來了) that she hangs out at Huang’s house watching movies and playing with his “bird” — not a euphemism, but a real one, apparently — Next Magazine recently published English-language text messages sent between Hu and a guy, alleged to be Huang, on March 1.
Judge for yourself:
Hu: Take shower already
Huang: Hehe Can I see?
Hu: No
Huang: Okok ... Can I touch?
Hu: Yes next time take shower with u haha
Huang: Don’t have too much dirty of a dream! save it for later haha
When asked about how the messages could have ended up in the media, Hu said she had lost her cellphone, rather conveniently, a few days previously.
As for whether or not the message sender is the star in question, Hu said she has many friends named Stanley.
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)