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!
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby