It is a sorry state of affairs when the country’s top gossip rag is reduced to peddling rumors based on tarot card readings, but the denials of Jay Chou (周杰倫) and former inamorata Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) have offered little room for creative (mis)interpretation. Pop Stop reported last week that Tsai had simply replied, “Getting back together? Thanks, but I’m not crazy,” when asked if she would be rekindling romance with Chou after a steamy onstage performance at a recent concert.
Next Magazine unearthed various circumstantial details about the frequency that Chou and Tsai have been in communication over the past half year and provided a report of Tsai’s sister Tsai Min-wen (蔡旻紋) visiting a tarot card reader and asking about Jolin’s love life. While the fortune-teller would not reveal the content of the consultation, he agreed to make another reading for the magazine, in which he revealed that the two superstars are likely to build on their recent good relations. The cards say that the Double-Js (雙-J) are about to become an item. But don’t hold your breath.
The dust is still settling on the 21st Golden Melody Awards ceremony that took place on Saturday, with mixed reviews of an event that was disrupted by heavy rain, time overruns and some uninspired emceeing. Harlem Yu (庾澄慶) has taken lots of flak since and has even promised to swear off future MC gigs.
As everyone already knows, pop diva Chang Hui-mei (張惠妹), better known as A-mei (阿妹), was the biggest winner of the evening, which according to the aforementioned fortune-teller, was a direct result of her breakup with basketball heartthrob Sam Ho (何守正), who brought bad luck to her career. Ho had the good grace to text A-mei to congratulate her, but local media are already designating him as very much a “former” boyfriend.
While most applauded A-mei’s recognition by the Golden Melody Awards (she received her first Best Female Mandarin Singer award eight years ago), consensus did not go across the board. There are some who beg to differ regarding the Golden Melody Awards given to David Tao (陶喆) and boy band 1976.
The girl group S.H.E and crooner Lin Yu-chia (林宥嘉), who were both given the cold shoulder by the Golden Melody panel, won recognition from HitFM’s Global Pop Music Charts (全球流行音樂金榜), who picked them as the most popular band and male mandarin singer, respectively, for the first half of this year.
Elsewhere, the news on the street is that actress Gong Li (鞏俐) has finally called time on her troubled marriage to Singaporean tobacco tycoon Ooi Hoe-seong (黃和祥). The story broke in The Southern Metropolis Entertainment Weekly (南都娛樂周刊) earlier this week and is now being coupled with rumors of a possible budding relationship between Gong and John Cusack, her co-star in the film Shanghai, which is currently showing in Taiwan.
In other celebrity news, things may be getting hot and sweaty, but in a good way. The rumored affair between aspiring actress Angelbaby, real name Yang Ying (楊穎), and successful actor and singer Huang Xiaoming (黃曉明) is now out in the open. According to NOW.com, Huang has used his connections to advance Angelbaby’s career in China, where the 21-year-old actress is currently promoting a “photo album” titled Paradise featuring pics of her in various states of undress while staying in Guam. Otaku, eat your hearts out.
Speaking of which, a new star has appeared on the otaku firmament. Meet Da Yuan (大元), real name Lin Ying-chen (林盈臻), who has leveraged her 32E breasts into celebrity status across the Chinese-speaking world. A recent spot on the CtiTV (中天) variety program University (大學生了沒), where her cleavage served as a more than adequate substitute for wit or personality, seems to have cemented her place in otaku heaven and secured a number of advertising contracts. She will now be going tit-to-tit with other big-breasted beauties such as Yaoyao (瑤瑤), real name Kuo Shu-yao (郭書瑤), and Tofu Sister (豆花妹), real name Tsai Huang-ru (蔡黃汝). Let the battle begin!
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and