’Tis the season for celebrity weddings, as well as their trials and tribulations.
The media have been salivating at any sign of acrimony in the matrimony of recently married Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛, aka Big S) and Chinese restaurateur Wang Xiaofei (汪小菲). Earlier this week, the China Times reported that Wang’s former girlfriend Kitty Zhang (張雨綺) was still bitter over losing her billionaire beau to Big S.
Zhang supposedly has a new paramour, Chinese director Wang Quanan (王全安), and the two reportedly have plans to marry. But the China Times played up the fact that Zhang and Wang Xiaofei “remain in constant contact,” and in the headline to its report, implied that the former lovers still had feelings for each other by using the Chinese idiom, “The lotus root breaks but its fibers remain joined together (藕斷絲連).”
Photo: Taipei Times
For good measure, the China Times included a comment from Big S’ mother, Chin Shih-chen (金世珍), who was not amused. She responded coolly, “[Big S] is very clear about what’s going on with the person she loves. I too am very clear about the behavior of Xiaofei ... With regard to everyone’s respective marriages and how they spend their days, I ask everyone to please just wish each other well.”
Another set of newlyweds, newscaster-turned-TV celebrity Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and her banker husband Ken Huang (黃伯俊), returned to Taiwan after their wedding in Bali, Indonesia, last week only to be faced with a convoluted media hullabaloo over the former’s mother, Lin Yueh-yun (林月雲).
Lin, a well-known actress in the 1970s, caused somewhat of a stir by showing up at the wedding with her partner, construction magnate Chiu Chia-hsiung (邱嘉雄), who escorted Hou down the aisle for the ceremony.
The problem in the eyes of the Taiwanese press? Lin and Chiu’s 29-year relationship began as an extramarital affair, and to this day Chiu has yet to officially divorce his wife. At the wedding, Lin gave an interview in which she apologized to Chiu’s family for “interfering” in their marriage.
It hasn’t helped Lin that she was previously involved in a highly publicized affair with another married man, the late TV presenter Hou Shih-hong (侯世宏), Patty Hou’s father. And since being linked with Chiu, Lin has never been able to shake off the label given to her by the Taiwanese media as a “home wrecker” (xiaosan (小三), or “third party”).
The Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) took an interest in how Hou’s mother offended the social mores of gossip-loving netizens, noting that “Internet fans’ image of the ‘perfect goddess’ has been cracked.” But Pop Stop thinks the fuss will die down — after all, Lin and Chiu’s relationship has been public knowledge since 2004.
As for Patty Hou, she acknowledged the matter in a television interview at the beginning of the week. “I don’t wish to trouble our elders,” she said. “A person’s life is a generation long, the news is just a momentary thing.”
Perhaps this is advice Singaporean pop diva Stefanie Sun (孫燕姿) should heed. Sun, who’s tying the knot on May 8, told reporters on a recent visit to Taiwan that while she was excited about her big day, preparing for her wedding has been “troublesome,” according to channelnewsasia.com. “I should have eloped,” she joked.
Pop Stop closes on a more savory note. Guests attending the May 7 wedding of TV entertainer Charles Chen (陳建州, better known as Blackie, 黑人) and singer-actress Christine Fan (范瑋琪) can expect a non-traditional dish at the banquet: beef noodles.
Channelnewsasia.com reports that the couple chose the dish to commemorate Chen’s father, a China Airlines crewmember who died in an air accident. The younger Chen holds fond memories of often sharing meals of beef noodles at the staff cafeteria in Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, Fan wrote in a microblog post.
But Chen and Fan won’t be serving your run-of-the-mill beef noodles: Each guest will receive a bowl, worth NT$580 each, with high quality beef and tendon imported from the US, soaked in a stock that will have stewed for 10 hours.
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?
After Jurassic Park premiered in 1993, people began to ask if scientists could really bring long-lost species back from extinction, just like in the hit movie. The idea has triggered “de-extinction” debates in several countries, including Taiwan, where the focus has been on the Formosan clouded leopard (designated after 1917 as Neofelis nebulosa brachyura). National Taiwan Museum’s (NTM) Web site describes the Formosan clouded leopard as “a subspecies endemic to Taiwan…it reaches a body length of 0.6m to 1.2m and tail length of 0.7m to 0.9m and weighs between 15kg and 30kg. It is entirely covered with beautiful cloud-like spots
For the past five years, Sammy Jou (周祥敏) has climbed Kinmen’s highest peak, Taiwu Mountain (太武山) at 6am before heading to work. In the winter, it’s dark when he sets out but even at this hour, other climbers are already coming down the mountain. All of this is a big change from Jou’s childhood during the Martial Law period, when the military requisitioned the mountain for strategic purposes and most of it was off-limits. Back then, only two mountain trails were open, and they were open only during special occasions, such as for prayers to one’s ancestors during Lunar New Year.
March 23 to March 29 Kao Chang (高長) set strict rules for his descendants: women were to learn music or cooking, and the men medicine or theology. No matter what life path they chose, they were to use their skills in service of the Presbyterian Church and society. As a result, musical ability — particularly in Western instruments — was almost expected among the Kao women, and even those who married into the family often had musical training. Although the men did not typically play instruments, they played a supporting role, helping to organize music programs such as children’s orchestras, writes
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