Kao Kuo-hua (高國華). Chen Tzu-hsuan (陳子璇). Tsai Yu-hsuan (蔡郁璇). If you don’t know who these three people are, congratulations! You’re one of a select few who have yet to be tainted by the media frenzy surrounding cram-school mogul Kao, his lover Chen, and his estranged wife/ news anchor Tsai. The hullaballoo started a month ago when the then-not-so-famous Kao was papped playing an away game with cram-school teacher Chen in his Mercedes-Benz. Since then, media outlets have been tripping over themselves to scoop each other, television talk shows have fought to be the first to interview the concerned parties, and the Apple Daily has made not one but 15 News-In-Motion (動新聞) (http://zzb.bz/eKRR6) videos on the affair.
This, obviously, is an issue of great national importance. Thus, in the interest of the public good, Pop Stop has combed through the gossip media’s archives and provides the following highlights of this ongoing real-life soap opera.
Aug. 23
Eighteen days after news of the affair broke, Tsai breaks her silence and threatens to sue Chen for wrecking her marriage. Kao counterattacks — well, sort of — by noting that Tsai was “the other woman” who broke up his first marriage.
Aug. 25
The 54-year-old lothario changes his mind and says he is still deeply in love with his 31-year-old wife.
Aug. 27
During a television interview, Tsai says her daughter’s elementary schoolmates called Chen an “ugly cow.”
Aug. 28
A text message Kao sent to Tsai earlier this month is made public. It sees the wayward husband begging for forgiveness and describing his 37-year-old lover as “old and ugly.” After showing the message to the paparazzi, Tsai says she will take care of Kao even if he ends up penniless. Huh?
Aug. 29
Tsai tells the paparazzi that, in addition to popping sleeping pills and antidepressants, she tried to commit suicide when she found out about her husband’s extracurricular activities in July.
Aug. 30
Kao and Tsai are officially divorced. Kao calls Chen his “true love.”
The Apple Daily devotes an entire News-In-Motion episode to Liu Yi (劉毅), revered as a doyen in Taiwan’s cram-school, or buxiban (補習班), industry and said to be a business rival of Kao. Liu was also Chen’s mentor and employer for eight years before she left his school to work for Kao. An infuriated Liu calls Kao a shameless liar, but promises to extend a warm welcome to Chen — who he says is currently “possessed” — when she returns to her senses.
Hopefully, after the media circus subsides, some journos will also come to their senses and question why they should care so much as to whether or not Tsai lost her virginity to her college sweetheart, or if Kao is bald and wears a wig, and why they should present these findings as “news” to a national audience.
In other news, rumor has it that director Ang Lee (李安) will make a business trip back to the country this month for the Fox-financed US adaptation of Life of Pi, a fantasy adventure penned by Canadian writer Yann Martel about a boy who survives a shipwreck and spends 227 days on a lifeboat with a tiger, a hyena and a zebra.
Media speculation points to Taichung’s Shuinan Airport
(水湳機場) as a possible location chosen by the director to shoot the 3D movie, which reportedly has a budget of more than NT$2.2 billion (US$70 million). Though Ang Lee’s brother Khan Lee (李崗) is staying tight-lipped about the director’s new project, actors including Wang Lee-hom (王力宏), Guey Lun-mei (桂綸鎂) and Mark Chao (趙又廷) have already expressed keen interest in participating in the Hollywood flick.
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would