Some celebrities are getting off to a more auspicious start to the Year of the Dragon than others.
S.H.E singer Ella Chen (陳嘉樺) began the lunar year with a marriage announcement. Chen plans to tie the knot with her Malaysian beau Alvin Lai (賴斯翔), a cosmetics executive, on May 5. She broke the news on her micro blog by posting a photo of her and Lai holding hands in front of a wooden plaque that read “love’s beautiful destiny” (良緣).
According to our sister paper, the Liberty Times, Chen and Lai’s families met for the first time over the Lunar New Year holiday at Chen’s home in Pingtung, which was described as a “joyous” occasion. The wedding will be held in Taiwan, according to Chen’s management, which said the couple are considering whether to hold a second banquet in Malaysia.
Photo: Taipei times
For Andy Lau (劉德華), the coming year will bring a baby girl. The 50-year-old Hong Kong superstar, who announced at the end of last year that his wife Carol Chu (朱麗倩) was pregnant, told fans at a meet-and-greet in Hong Kong that they are expecting a “little dragon girl,” due in June. Sharing such news is a turnaround for the famously secretive Lau, who previously tried to hide his marriage to Chu.
In other celebrity news, actor Ethan Ruan (阮經天) is finally doing his military service. The 29-year-old star of the hit gangster flick Monga (艋舺) has been one of a number of male entertainers who have delayed their compulsory service by remaining enrolled in college. This would have been Ruan’s eighth year as a “student” at the Hsing Wu Institute of Technology (醒吾科技學院).
Ruan, who is disqualified from joining the military because he has flat feet, will perform alternative service. The actor fended off accusations that he had been let off lightly because of his fame, telling reporters waiting outside the door of his Taipei home earlier this week that his condition was determined during high school, well before he became an actor.
But the Apple Daily, among other news gatherers, naturally had its doubts and dutifully joined the paparazzi circus that trailed Ruan during his last few days in Taipei and followed him all the way to Taichung’s Chenggong Ling (成功嶺) training camp where he was whisked away in a van to report for duty.
The press got in a huff over Ruan’s “preferential treatment.” Why did he get to skip the standard procedure of having his temperature taken upon entering the training grounds? And why was his private car allowed past the sentry gate without undergoing inspection?
A spokesman for the training camp insisted that none of the base’s rules were broken in allowing Ruan’s car to pass without inspection. He also assured the reporters that Ruan would have his temperature taken like everyone else, but at a different location because “there were so many media [outlets] at the site.”
Ruan will spend three weeks at Chenggong Ling, where he will live among 1,100 fellow servicemen and follow a regimen of waking up at 6am every day, running 3km, and undergoing training in first aid and public service. And it’s a safe bet the paparazzi will be on the lookout when he moves on to his next post.
The Lunar New Year holiday is a good time for Chinese-language movie premieres, and pop superstar Jay Chou’s (周杰倫) new blockbuster action flick The Viral Factor (逆戰) proved to be a dragon at the box office in China, raking in the equivalent of NT$470 million.
But in Taiwan, the film, directed by Dante Lam (林超賢) and co-starring Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒), met with a comparatively lukewarm response, bringing in only NT$10.5 million.
Even the feel-good movie Perfect Two (新天生一對), which stars Vic Chou (周渝民) and Ella Chen, saw higher returns of NT$27 million.
The holiday box office winners in Taiwan were all homegrown productions: Black and White Episode 1: The Dawn of Assault (痞子英雄首部曲:全面開戰), an action flick that was filmed in Kaohsiung and stars Mark Chao (趙又廷), has earned nearly NT$90 million to date; and Din Tao: Leader of the Parade (陣頭), which is about a Taichung folk drumming troupe, took NT$65 million in ticket sales.
Pop-rock idols Mayday (五月天) made a big splash in Cannes, France, earlier this week, drawing fans from all over Europe to the Marche International du Disque et de l’Edition Musicale (MIDEM), the world’s largest music industry trade fair.
Mayday was one of the high-profile acts for the festival’s Taiwan Night, and the audience’s enthusiastic response garnered attention from French media and international music critics, according to various Chinese-language reports. The mostly Chinese-speaking crowd was small for a typical Mayday concert — only 500 seats were available for the sold-out show — but the Apple Daily reported that scalpers were charging up to 400 euros (approximately NT$15,500) for tickets that originally cost 16 euros (approximately NT$620).
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located