It’s often said that the entertainment industry is built on foundations of fantasy and hype, but some old-time entertainers understand the importance of putting their money into something that lasts.
In the case of Fei Yu-ching (費玉清), the younger brother of popular entertainer Chang Fei
(張菲), that’s bricks and mortar.
This week, the media was awash with news that the singer and TV host had spent NT$330 million on purchasing a property on Dunhua North Road (敦化北路).
According to the Apple Daily, Fei Yu-ching bought the property outright, paying cash up front for the 600-plus square meter commercial property.
Fei Yu-ching certainly has the money to spend, having grossed, according to the paper, a total of NT$186 million for concerts so far this year.
According to the Apple Daily, the singer, known for his mellifluous voice, low-key lifestyle and financial acumen, is careful with his money.
Another entertainer who is being careful with money is Lin Chi-ling (林志玲), who has decided to fight a tax claim of NT$8.19 million on her earnings from last year. The conflict centers on whether some of her earnings are regarded as income earned through her association with modeling agency Catwalk (凱渥) or personal income.
According to the tax agency, Lin failed to report NT$170 million in personal income between 2003 and 2005, which is the basis of its present claim.
Meanwhile, Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) is promoting a new album, which once again sees her flaunting her many physical assets in the media.
The album, titled Myself, has already generated much hype with rumors of steamy music videos.
The most recently released music video, Love’s Pupil (玩愛之徒), for which Tsai served as artistic director, is rumored to push the boundaries, showing off vast areas of Tsai’s well-toned body.
While Tsai revels in opening up on screen, she has said that she has had enough of unwelcome attention from the media, which has recently taken to shining the spotlight on her family life.
In a statement to the press, Tsai asked the media to stop bothering her family, and got decidedly tetchy when accused of lacking proper respect for family elders. “It’s not up to the media to define what constitutes respect,” she is quoted as saying.
In romance-related news, Sammi Cheng (鄭秀文) has, according to NOWnews.com, become the touch-paper of a breakup between Chinese singer Andy Hui (�?w) and Michelle Yu (余德琳), his girlfriend of three years.
Hui and Cheng enjoyed a high-profile and commercially successful personal and professional relationship in the first half of the last decade.
Cheng said in a statement that her relationship with Hui had changed over the past 10 years “from romance to friendship” (愛情變成了情誼), and that there was no basis for the pair getting back together.
Cheng begged the media to lay off the three principals of this drama, but in a slow news week, her wish fell on deaf ears.
TV personality He Yi-hang
(賀一航) has become a major focus of news after police busted a prostitution and drug ring midweek. Apart from being shown to have been a regular client of the syndicate, He stands accused of having trafficked cocaine and ketamine, which is likely to get him into much more trouble than the titillating reports that he engaged in threesomes with hookers.
Despite the lurid details that have been splashed across the tabloids, He’s fiancee, referred to in the Chinese-language media simply as Judy, is standing by her man, for the moment at least.
Their wedding, scheduled for the end of the year, is still on track. According to a report in the United Daily News, police said that He had been “very unlucky” (很衰), since their investigations had not been targeting him at all. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
April 28 to May 4 During the Japanese colonial era, a city’s “first” high school typically served Japanese students, while Taiwanese attended the “second” high school. Only in Taichung was this reversed. That’s because when Taichung First High School opened its doors on May 1, 1915 to serve Taiwanese students who were previously barred from secondary education, it was the only high school in town. Former principal Hideo Azukisawa threatened to quit when the government in 1922 attempted to transfer the “first” designation to a new local high school for Japanese students, leading to this unusual situation. Prior to the Taichung First
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
The Ministry of Education last month proposed a nationwide ban on mobile devices in schools, aiming to curb concerns over student phone addiction. Under the revised regulation, which will take effect in August, teachers and schools will be required to collect mobile devices — including phones, laptops and wearables devices — for safekeeping during school hours, unless they are being used for educational purposes. For Chang Fong-ching (張鳳琴), the ban will have a positive impact. “It’s a good move,” says the professor in the department of
Toward the outside edge of Taichung City, in Wufeng District (霧峰去), sits a sprawling collection of single-story buildings with tiled roofs belonging to the Wufeng Lin (霧峰林家) family, who rose to prominence through success in military, commercial, and artistic endeavors in the 19th century. Most of these buildings have brick walls and tiled roofs in the traditional reddish-brown color, but in the middle is one incongruous property with bright white walls and a black tiled roof: Yipu Garden (頤圃). Purists may scoff at the Japanese-style exterior and its radical departure from the Fujianese architectural style of the surrounding buildings. However, the property