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.
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
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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