It’s not even April, and 2011 is already shaping up to be a bumper year of celebrity nuptials. The Apple Daily reported that more than 20 celebrity couples will tie the knot this year, which the gossip rag has dubbed a “Hundred Years of Good Fortune” (百年好合) in a nod to the ROC’s 100th birthday.
Singer and actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛, aka Big S) and Chinese restaurateur Wang Xiaofei (汪小菲) will say their vows (for the second time) later this month, this time on Hainan Island; Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ken Huang (黃伯俊) will head to Bali next month to tie the knot; and singer Christine Fan (范瑋琪) will make an honest man of entertainer Charles Chen (陳建州, better known as Blackie) in May, and in the same month infamous cram school owner Kao Kuo-hua (高國華) and Chen Tsu-hsuan (陳子璇) will get hitched.
A Yahoo poll asked Netizens: “Whose wedding would you want to attend?” Even though they’ve yet to set a date, pop singer Selina Jen (任家萱) and fiance Richard Chang (張承中) came out top.
Photo: Taipei Times
Not to worry, there are plenty more fish in the celebrity sea, and a few mollusks too.
One star who might have difficulty finding a marriage partner is singer Show Luo (羅志祥, also known as Alan Luo).
“Whenever I’ve brought my girlfriend home in the past, my mom would intentionally let the dog out to go to the toilet,” he was quoted as saying in a report by the China Times. “Then, mom would watch to see if the girl would voluntarily help clean up after the dog. It was a test to see whether or not she loves animals.”
If cleaning up animal droppings is a sign of love, it might be a while yet before Luo gets hitched.
Then again, a love of animals doesn’t necessarily equate to loyalty in a relationship. The one ex who “passed” Luo’s mother’s test was later caught cheating on him.
In other romance news, Jolin Tsai’s (蔡依林) relationship with Vivian Dawson seems to be cooling off amid rumors that the New Zealand hunk is an inconsiderate creep. At a promotional event earlier this week, Dawson remained tight-lipped when asked about his relationship with Taiwan’s queen of pop.
What would he give his love on Valentine’s Day, asked the assembled gossip hounds? He lamely responded that the present would be the beauty products he was plugging. His manager later told the media that the pair were just friends.
If Dawson’s romance is on the rocks, he can at least take comfort in his earning power, which has gone from NT$10,000 per appearance to NT$100,000. But will a breakup mean a smaller paycheck? Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, NOWnews revealed that manly singers Jam Hsiao (蕭敬騰) and JJ Lin (林俊傑) are an item after they were spotted having dinner together. This followed a series of flirtatious posts on their microblogs.
“I want to eat JJ,” (我要去吃JJ了) Hsiao wrote.
One “shocked” fan wrote: “He came out.”
Lin, who the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reports is a devout Christian, wrote that if Hsiao was hungry, “I’d better put some more sauce on me. Otherwise he’ll only be able to taste my sweat.”
Yum-yum.
The breakwater stretches out to sea from the sprawling Kaohsiung port in southern Taiwan. Normally, it’s crowded with massive tankers ferrying liquefied natural gas from Qatar to be stored in the bulbous white tanks that dot the shoreline. These are not normal times, though, and not a single shipment from Qatar has docked at the Yongan terminal since early March after the Strait of Hormuz was shuttered. The suspension has provided a realistic preview of a potential Chinese blockade, a move that would throttle an economy anchored by the world’s most advanced and power-hungry semiconductor industry. It is a stark reminder of
May 11 to May 17 Traversing the southern slopes of the Yushan Range in 1931, Japanese naturalist Tadao Kano knew he was approaching the last swath of Taiwan still beyond colonial control. The “vast, unknown territory,” protected by the “fierce” Bunun headman Dahu Ali, was “filled with an utterly endless jungle that choked the mountains and valleys,” Kano wrote. He noted how the group had “refused to submit to the measures of our authorities and entrenched themselves deep in these mountains … living a free existence spent chasing deer in the morning and seeking serow in the evening,” even describing them as
As a different column was being written, the big news dropped that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) announced that negotiations within his caucus, with legislative speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT, party Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chair Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) had produced a compromise special military budget proposal. On Thursday morning, prior to meeting with Cheng over a lunch of beef noodles, Lu reiterated her support for a budget of NT$800 or NT$900 billion — but refused to comment after the meeting. Right after Fu’s
What government project has expropriated the most land in Taiwan? According to local media reports, it is the Taoyuan Aerotropolis, eating 2,500 hectares of land in its first phase, with more to come. Forty thousand people are expected to be displaced by the project. Naturally that enormous land grab is generating powerful pushback. Last week Chen Chien-ho (陳健和), a local resident of Jhuwei Borough (竹圍) in Taoyuan City’s Dayuan District (大園) filed a petition for constitutional review of the project after losing his case at the Taipei Administrative Court. The Administrative Court found in favor of nine other local landowners, but
RSS