Faye Wong’s (王菲) recent visit to Taipei caused a stir among fans and the entertainment media, but that was to be expected.
The pop diva performed a run of highly anticipated shows at Taipei Arena (台北小巨蛋) last weekend as part of a comeback tour. Wong dropped out of the limelight in 2004, hinting at a retirement from singing.
The announcement of her return to the stage late last year was greeted in Taiwan with frenzied ticket sales: When tickets for last week’s shows went on sale in October, buyers caused ERA’s online ticketing system to crash within minutes. Once ERA fixed the problem, 90 percent of the tickets for her three shows were sold within two hours.
Photo: Taipei Times
While in Taipei last week, the Beijing-born 41-year-old singer’s every move and utterance was closely scrutinized.
Wong is famous for her cool demeanor in public, and TVBS illustrated her reticence by counting the total number of words she spoke to the audience during the three shows: 26.
And as the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) put it, Wong often found herself getting “stuck” (卡卡) wherever she went. Paparazzi and fans mobbed her as soon as she stepped off the plane last week. They mobbed her again at a post-concert party at the Taipei nightspot Barcode (where she had to plead with the photographers to be careful and not push each other), and saw her off at the airport when she left.
But Wong didn’t seem to mind the attention while waiting for her return flight, at least judging from video posted online by the Apple Daily. When asked by reporters to judge her own performances, she replied, “It’s in the past, I don’t care about giving myself a score. Anyhow I did my best.”
She also addressed a minor drama that occurred during her final concert on Sunday. During one segment, Wong sang a number while sitting on a “flying chair” that was lifted three stories high above the audience. The chair got stuck for a few seconds on the way down, which left Wong visibly startled.
“I was a little nervous, but it was OK,” she said. “I thought that the audience was calmer.”
Overnight sensation singer Lin Yu-chun (林育群), also known as “Little Fatty” (小胖), had better look out, because there’s a new YouTube star in town.
Forty-one-year-old comedienne and singer Lotus Wang (王彩樺) has scored more than two million hits for her video and electro-house hit Bobee (保庇, www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gWu5Y6yY4E), a cover of a song by South Korean girl band T-ara.
The video recently received a nod from CNN as the “best viral video of the week,” and the “Bobee” dance has become a veritable craze, spawning a rash of copycat videos. The Macarena goes taike (台客), if you will.
Bobee, a catchy tune sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) about asking deities for protection and luck, is on Wang’s first album, Bo Peep Bo Peep (有唱有保庇), which reached the number one spot on G-Music’s charts twice since being released last month.
Wang described herself in a recent interview with the Central News Agency as a mere “B-lister” in the entertainment world.
What was the population of Taiwan when the first Negritos arrived? In 500BC? The 1st century? The 18th? These questions are important, because they can contextualize the number of babies born last month, 6,523, to all the people on Taiwan, indigenous and colonial alike. That figure represents a year on year drop of 3,884 babies, prefiguring total births under 90,000 for the year. It also represents the 26th straight month of deaths exceeding births. Why isn’t this a bigger crisis? Because we don’t experience it. Instead, what we experience is a growing and more diverse population. POPULATION What is Taiwan’s actual population?
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