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.
The breakwater stretches out to sea from the sprawling Kaohsiung port in southern Taiwan. Normally, it’s crowded with massive tankers ferrying liquefied natural gas from Qatar to be stored in the bulbous white tanks that dot the shoreline. These are not normal times, though, and not a single shipment from Qatar has docked at the Yongan terminal since early March after the Strait of Hormuz was shuttered. The suspension has provided a realistic preview of a potential Chinese blockade, a move that would throttle an economy anchored by the world’s most advanced and power-hungry semiconductor industry. It is a stark reminder of
May 11 to May 17 Traversing the southern slopes of the Yushan Range in 1931, Japanese naturalist Tadao Kano knew he was approaching the last swath of Taiwan still beyond colonial control. The “vast, unknown territory,” protected by the “fierce” Bunun headman Dahu Ali, was “filled with an utterly endless jungle that choked the mountains and valleys,” Kano wrote. He noted how the group had “refused to submit to the measures of our authorities and entrenched themselves deep in these mountains … living a free existence spent chasing deer in the morning and seeking serow in the evening,” even describing them as
As a different column was being written, the big news dropped that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) announced that negotiations within his caucus, with legislative speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT, party Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chair Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) had produced a compromise special military budget proposal. On Thursday morning, prior to meeting with Cheng over a lunch of beef noodles, Lu reiterated her support for a budget of NT$800 or NT$900 billion — but refused to comment after the meeting. Right after Fu’s
What government project has expropriated the most land in Taiwan? According to local media reports, it is the Taoyuan Aerotropolis, eating 2,500 hectares of land in its first phase, with more to come. Forty thousand people are expected to be displaced by the project. Naturally that enormous land grab is generating powerful pushback. Last week Chen Chien-ho (陳健和), a local resident of Jhuwei Borough (竹圍) in Taoyuan City’s Dayuan District (大園) filed a petition for constitutional review of the project after losing his case at the Taipei Administrative Court. The Administrative Court found in favor of nine other local landowners, but
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