This week’s tabloids were dominated by rumors of romantic reunions and new affaires d’amour. On home turf, Jay Chou (周杰倫) and Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) continue to make headlines after their sultry duet at the end of the Mando-pop king’s Taipei concert on June 13. Local tabloids have since generated plenty of titillating content for gossip hounds to chew on. One story that seems to have gained the most traction involves a diamond ring from a well-known luxury brand and an alleged marital proposal from Chou to Tsai after the concert.
Fans have greeted the Double-Js’ (雙-J) rumored reunion with great enthusiasm. A composite photo showing the pair cuddling together circulated on the Internet and was quickly picked up by the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) and the Apple Daily.
Both Tsai and Chou say the reports are rubbish. According to the Liberty Times, Chou responded to the question of why he chose to perform with Tsai by saying, “I just wanted to freak everyone out.” Meanwhile, Tsai was quoted as saying: “Getting back together? Thanks, but I’m not crazy.”
One man who is surely freaked out by the possibility of the two getting back together is Tsai’s agent Chen Tse-shan (陳澤杉). The Warner Music (華納音樂) impresario has not been on good terms with the Chairman after the two bickered over a chart-rigging controversy last year. Chen risks losing his cash cow to Chou’s record company, JVR Music (杰威爾音樂), if the Double-Js get really friendly with each other.
Having recovered from two year’s of depression and found Jesus, erstwhile Hong Kong pop diva Sammi Cheng (鄭秀文) is making a comeback with a Mandarin-language gospel album, Faith (信). Chinese-language media outlets also report that Cheng’s old flame Andy Hui (許志安) is back in the 38-year-old star’s life.
A series of snapshots and a chart published by the Liberty Times last Friday detailed Hui and Cheng’s itineraries in Taipei last week, which involved them staying at the same hotel, shooting music videos at the same studio and flying back to Hong Kong on the same plane. But according to their agents, the two are just good friends.
In other celebrity romance news, Chinese heartthrob Huang Xiaoming (黃曉明) and 21-year-old model Angelababy have become the hottest new item on the tabloids’ front pages after Huang publicly acknowledged their relationship in front of the media in Shanghai last week.
Hailed as Hong Kong’s new “sex goddess” (性感女神), Angelababy, whose real name is Yang Ying (楊穎), has quickly risen to stardom in the last couple of years based on nothing more than her looks.
A widely circulated batch of photos seems to indicate that Yang Ying had to go through plenty of revamping before she became the Angelababy we know now. But this has done nothing to dim Huang’s ardor. His public confession of love included an admission that he pampers his woman “as if she were a princess.” China’s most bankable actor is also reported to have introduced his sweetheart to Hong Kong entertainment mogul Peter Lam (林建岳), who, according to rumors, is planning to make Angelababy the next Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝).
After being arrested on drug-related charges for the third time, Taiwanese entertainer Da Bing (大炳), real name Yu Bing-hsian
(余炳賢), was baptized at the Home of Christ church in Taipei last Saturday. The disgraced entertainer said he wants to find inner strength through God’s love.
But will his sexual orientation get between him and God? Da Bing was quoted by the Apple Daily as saying, “That’s between God and me.”
In Pop Stop’s opinion, the quickest way for Da Bing to resolve this issue is to join the Tong-Kwang Light House Presbyterian Church (同光同志長老教會), Taiwan’s first church for gays and lesbians.
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
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)
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
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