Pop Stop begins this week with a warning to all Taiwanese celebrities heading to China: Don’t expect the personal details on your visa application to stay personal. This is what the notoriously private Jerry Yan (言承旭), of boy band F4, discovered a few days back.
Yan, unlike many in Taiwan’s celebrity firmament, maintains a strict code of secrecy regarding his family, which includes concealing the identity of his mother and sister. Apparently his mother’s neighbors don’t even know Yan is her son. He has never been photographed at his residence and his home address is kept secret from his colleagues.
But all that will probably change after his visa application — which included his flight number, passport photo and residential address — was leaked to the public, according to the Apple Daily.
Photo: Taipei Times
Stepping off an airplane in Shanghai to a crowd of screaming fans earlier this week, a visibly surprised Yan wondered aloud how fans knew about his arrival. Though clearly miffed by the exposure, Yan was still gracious enough to sign autographs for the assembled fans.
One celebrity whose family isn’t afraid of the spotlight is Selina Jen’s (任家萱). The starlet’s father, Jen Ming-ting (任明廷), dubbed “Father Jen” by the media, regularly comments on his daughter’s struggles to overcome serious burns incurred in an accident while filming a commercial in China last year.
The United Daily News recently reported that Jen’s hair is growing back, quoting her as saying every bit of growth reminds her of the pain she’s been through. Rumor has it that she will release an EP containing three new tracks and publish a book about her recovery process in October.
It seems as though publishing a memoir has become de rigueur among Taiwan’s celebrity firmament. Calvin Chen (辰亦儒) of boy band Fahrenheit (飛輪海) launched Journey Backwards: Calvin Chen’s Vancouver Foreign Study Diary on Monday, and judging by the title, it may be of use to those suffering from insomnia.
Pop Stop would prefer a tell-all memoir by shutterbug Edison Chen (陳冠希), complete with pictures. And on the topic of Chen, a report published earlier this month in Apple Daily saying Chen and old flame Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) sat next to each other on a flight to Hong Kong continues to make headlines.
Chen, as if you needed reminding, left the entertainment biz in 2008 after explicit photos of him and several starlets, including Cheung, were stolen from his computer and posted on the Internet. He has gradually made a comeback over the past year but reportedly remained on bad terms with Cheung — until the “Airplane Incident” (機上事件), as Apple is now calling it.
At first, Cheung denied the report.
Chen confirmed it, however, stating that he had used his mobile phone to photograph himself with the Hong Kong beauty. But then Cheung’s father-in-law Patrick Tse (謝賢) refuted it again, asking, “Where’s the proof?” On Monday, Cheung’s manager basically admitted the meeting had taken place when he said it was only polite to acknowledge “someone you know on a flight.”
When Cheung was spotted at Taipei’s Xinyi Eslite on Wednesday shopping for her 31st birthday, her son Lucas in tow, the media, fixated as always, almost caused a riot trying to ask her if the “incident” was true. “Today is my birthday,” she said. “I don’t want to think about that.” Cheung was eventually escorted away by security.
Though Chen isn’t writing his memoirs — yet — he is in the process of penning a musical. Asked if he plans to include the sex scandal in the musical, he responded, “It’s not done yet,” leaving the paparazzi to wonder if he meant his sexual escapades or the script.
Just after 6am, I walked up to the ticket gate at Taipei Main Station and entered the Taiwan Railway platform without scanning any ticket; instead, I flashed the Sanrio Fun Rail pass on my phone to the gate worker and was admitted. I found my train and prepared to board. My destination? This very same station. I was embarking on a 13-hour journey on one of two round-the-island trains operated by ezTravel. They run each day, one counterclockwise around the island and one clockwise. They differ in a number of ways from an ordinary Taiwan Railway train and can make for
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