The rich and famous can usually be counted on to embarrass themselves for our entertainment, especially with the media already antsy about the way they were treated during the March 22 wedding of Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛, aka Big S) and Chinese restaurateur Wang Xiaofei (汪小菲) last week. At the nuptials, Chinese businesswoman Zhang Lan (張蘭), the mother of the groom, made some expansive claims about how good her connections in China were, claiming close ties with businessman Wang Jianlin (王健林), whose Wanda Group (萬達集團) owns the Sanya Sheraton Hotel where the wedding took place.
His son Wang Sicong (王思聰), who is CEO of the financial group, said in an online post that Zhang had never met his father, and while the hotel may have offered discounts for accommodation for the wedding party, it certainly was not free. Fans of Big S have taken to the Internet in defense of their idol, but Zhang and her son haven’t won any points from these accusations of rumormongering.
A number of romantic entanglements were picked up on the celebrity radar over the past week. One involved actress Novia Lin (林若亞) and Edwin Gerard (紀亞文). Lin has strenuously denied any connection with Gerard, a Chinese American male model eight years her junior, but the intrepid paparazzi of Next Magazine caught them on camera this week holding hands and sharing an umbrella. These steamy revelations of public intimacy have led to all kinds of speculation that the 34-year-old actress might be casting off her previously demure facade for something a little more titillating. She is currently promoting the Golden Bell Award-nominated television soap Shan Huen (閃昏), in which she plays a forceful woman with a fondness for sadomasochistic sex, and has also started modeling lingerie.
Photo: Taipei Times
Another romantic entanglement to make the pages of Next Magazine was the seemingly surreptitious meeting between actress Shu Qi (舒淇) and Eddie Peng (彭于晏), who has been quoted as having described Shu as “a goddess.” Shu should have headed back to Shenzhen from the Maldives after attending the March 26 wedding of good friend Kelly Lin (林熙蕾), but she took a detour via Taipei, where she met Peng at the well-known night spot Fucking Place (操場).
Numerous friends and colleagues were there as well, but Next Magazine suggests that there may be something a little more to the meeting than a casual get together. The venue’s name may have sent paparazzi into a frenzy, but the two actors have a long-standing friendship, and while there have been rumors of possible romantic involvement, the sighting last week adds little substance to the case the gossip rags are trying to build.
In other news, Jay Chou (周杰倫) may have reason to congratulate himself. Although he endured many insults as a result of his participation in a subsidiary role in The Green Hornet superhero movie, it got him noticed among young Americans.
Pop Stop felt a rush of patriotic excitement when it saw rumors that Chou had been nominated for the MTV Music Awards. Closer investigation revealed that he has been “nominated to be nominated,” and has joined the likes of Aaron Johnson from Kick-Ass, Arnie Hammer from The Social Network and Alex Pettyfer from I Am Number Four as eligible nominees for the 2011 “Best Male Breakout Star.” Other accolades include his appearance on the nomination list for Time magazine’s list of the world’s most influential people. He’s clearly on the road to becoming Taiwan’s first international star of stage and screen.
Aug. 25 to Aug. 31 Although Mr. Lin (林) had been married to his Japanese wife for a decade, their union was never legally recognized — and even their daughter was officially deemed illegitimate. During the first half of Japanese rule in Taiwan, only marriages between Japanese men and Taiwanese women were valid, unless the Taiwanese husband formally joined a Japanese household. In 1920, Lin took his frustrations directly to the Ministry of Home Affairs: “Since Japan took possession of Taiwan, we have obeyed the government’s directives and committed ourselves to breaking old Qing-era customs. Yet ... our marriages remain unrecognized,
During the Metal Ages, prior to the arrival of the Dutch and Chinese, a great shift took place in indigenous material culture. Glass and agate beads, introduced after 400BC, completely replaced Taiwanese nephrite (jade) as the ornamental materials of choice, anthropologist Liu Jiun-Yu (劉俊昱) of the University of Washington wrote in a 2023 article. He added of the island’s modern indigenous peoples: “They are the descendants of prehistoric Formosans but have no nephrite-using cultures.” Moderns squint at that dynamic era of trade and cultural change through the mutually supporting lenses of later settler-colonialism and imperial power, which treated the indigenous as
By 1971, heroin and opium use among US troops fighting in Vietnam had reached epidemic proportions, with 42 percent of American servicemen saying they’d tried opioids at least once and around 20 percent claiming some level of addiction, according to the US Department of Defense. Though heroin use by US troops has been little discussed in the context of Taiwan, these and other drugs — produced in part by rogue Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies then in Thailand and Myanmar — also spread to US military bases on the island, where soldiers were often stoned or high. American military policeman
An attempt to promote friendship between Japan and countries in Africa has transformed into a xenophobic row about migration after inaccurate media reports suggested the scheme would lead to a “flood of immigrants.” The controversy erupted after the Japan International Cooperation Agency, or JICA, said this month it had designated four Japanese cities as “Africa hometowns” for partner countries in Africa: Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania. The program, announced at the end of an international conference on African development in Yokohama, will involve personnel exchanges and events to foster closer ties between the four regional Japanese cities — Imabari, Kisarazu, Sanjo and
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