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.
A recent report from the Environmental Management Administration of the Ministry of Environment highlights a perennial problem: illegal dumping of construction waste. In Taoyuan’s Yangmei District (楊梅) and Hsinchu’s Longtan District (龍潭) criminals leased 10,000 square meters of farmland, saying they were going to engage in horticulture. They then accepted between 40,000 and 50,000 cubic meters of construction waste from sites in northern Taiwan, charging less than the going rate for disposal, and dumped the waste concrete, tile, metal and glass onto the leased land. Taoyuan District prosecutors charged 33 individuals from seven companies with numerous violations of the law. This
The problem with Marx’s famous remark that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second time as farce, is that the first time is usually farce as well. This week Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made a pilgrimage to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “to confer, converse and otherwise hob-nob” with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. The visit was an instant international media hit, with major media reporting almost entirely shorn of context. “Taiwan’s main opposition leader landed in China Tuesday for a rare visit aimed at cross-strait ‘peace’”, crowed Agence-France Presse (AFP) from Shanghai. Rare!
What is the importance within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of the meeting between Xi Jinping (習近平), the leader Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), the leader of the KMT? Local media is an excellent guide to determine how important — or unimportant — a news event is to the public. Taiwan has a vast online media ecosystem, and if a news item is gaining traction among readers, editors shift resources in near real time to boost coverage to meet the demand and drive up traffic. Cheng’s China trip is among the top headlines, but by no means
Sunflower movement superstar Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) once quipped that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could nominate a watermelon to run for Tainan mayor and win. Conversely, the DPP could run a living saint for mayor in Taipei and still lose. In 2022, the DPP ran with the closest thing to a living saint they could find: former Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中). During the pandemic, his polling was astronomically high, with the approval of his performance reaching as high as 91 percent in one TVBS poll. He was such a phenomenon that people printed out pop-up cartoon
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