Since rumors first emerged in February that Jay Chou (周杰倫) was dating 17-year-old Australian-Taiwanese model Hannah Quinlivan (昆凌), the parties on both sides haven’t confirmed whether the two are romantically attached. Chou famously stonewalled inquisitive reporters by demanding that they produce photographic evidence.
But Next Magazine has finally obtained evidence: a photo of Chou and Quinlivan, who turned 18 on Aug. 12, arm-in-arm on a boat in Marseilles, France. The Chairman set off on a 13-day holiday on Aug. 8, and there was furious speculation that he would meet Quinlivan to celebrate her birthday overseas. Now that the two have been caught together, Chou will have a hard time denying the relationship. The hugely successful musician and producer has had no shortage of romantic relationships in the 12 years in which he has been in the media limelight, so much of the excitement in the press is really about Next media getting one up on Chou, who has not always been as open and up front about his private life as the local media could wish.
With the emergence of one celebrity relationship, another flounders. Media personality Sisy Chen (陳文茜), in another story to break in Next Magazine, has ended her seven-year relationship with the well-known plastic surgeon Sung Cheng-yu (宋正宇). This revelation emerged after three weeks of intense scrutiny from the magazine, who say that in the past, Sung would always pick up Chen after she finished recording her hugely popular television show.
Photo: Taipei Times
Now, Chen has thrown herself into socializing with the rich and famous, and has recently
swapped her Mini Cooper for a BMW Series 7, while Sung gets around town on the MRT, heading home alone after work. Rumors as to why the relationship has hit the rocks abound, with revelations that things started to go wrong after a minor traffic accident when the two where holidaying on the North Coast. Friends have said that Chen felt unwell after the incident and worried that it might be the result of an injury that Sung was unconcerned about and failed to show proper consideration.
There are no doubts anymore about the fact that Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) and Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒) are splitting up, with the interminable rumors and squabbling of the past months culminating in a joint statement issued earlier this week saying that the two will be getting divorced. They will retain joint custody of their two children, but no details were provided as to the financial arrangements between the two.
Under Hong Kong law, neither party can remarry in the next five months, but immediately rumors have begun to circulate that Cheung may be getting together with former lover Daniel Chan (陳曉東). Chan was in Taiwan this week, but when approached for comment during a recording session, he retreated to the changing room, his manager insisting that the divorce proceedings did not concern Chan in any way.
According to the Apple Daily, the break up has not harmed either Cheung’s or Tse’s careers. The paper stated that Cheung has already received three offers for film roles that could be worth NT$200 million, and that Tse remains heavily in demand, and will appear with Wang Lee-hom (王力宏) in Yuen Woo-ping’s (袁和平) new martial arts drama Wu Dang (武當), and is currently in negotiations for eight other projects.
Towering high above Taiwan’s capital city at 508 meters, Taipei 101 dominates the skyline. The earthquake-proof skyscraper of steel and glass has captured the imagination of professional rock climber Alex Honnold for more than a decade. Tomorrow morning, he will climb it in his signature free solo style — without ropes or protective equipment. And Netflix will broadcast it — live. The event’s announcement has drawn both excitement and trepidation, as well as some concerns over the ethical implications of attempting such a high-risk endeavor on live broadcast. Many have questioned Honnold’s desire to continues his free-solo climbs now that he’s a
As Taiwan’s second most populous city, Taichung looms large in the electoral map. Taiwanese political commentators describe it — along with neighboring Changhua County — as Taiwan’s “swing states” (搖擺州), which is a curious direct borrowing from American election terminology. In the early post-Martial Law era, Taichung was referred to as a “desert of democracy” because while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was winning elections in the north and south, Taichung remained staunchly loyal to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). That changed over time, but in both Changhua and Taichung, the DPP still suffers from a “one-term curse,” with the
Jan. 26 to Feb. 1 Nearly 90 years after it was last recorded, the Basay language was taught in a classroom for the first time in September last year. Over the following three months, students learned its sounds along with the customs and folktales of the Ketagalan people, who once spoke it across northern Taiwan. Although each Ketagalan settlement had its own language, Basay functioned as a common trade language. By the late 19th century, it had largely fallen out of daily use as speakers shifted to Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), surviving only in fragments remembered by the elderly. In
Lines between cop and criminal get murky in Joe Carnahan’s The Rip, a crime thriller set across one foggy Miami night, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Damon and Affleck, of course, are so closely associated with Boston — most recently they produced the 2024 heist movie The Instigators there — that a detour to South Florida puts them, a little awkwardly, in an entirely different movie landscape. This is Miami Vice territory or Elmore Leonard Land, not Southie or The Town. In The Rip, they play Miami narcotics officers who come upon a cartel stash house that Lt. Dane Dumars (Damon)
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