Pop Stop reported last week that Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) was going to sue the Hong Kong edition of the Apple Daily, and its sister weekly Next Magazine, after both gossip rags said that she allegedly prostituted herself out to wealthy Chinese businessmen. Well, on Monday she made good on her word.
An article in the Apple last month alleged that Zhang “is a prostitute” and had sex with disgraced Chinese official Bo Xilai (薄熙來) and a wealthy associate for money, on numerous occasions, court documents showed.
The daily reported that the 33-year-old Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍) and Rush Hour 2 star had sex with other top Chinese officials and had amassed a whopping fortune of close to NT$3.3 billion (US$110 million) as a result. Though the original story was removed from the tabloid’s Web site following Monday’s suit, pretty much every other media outlet in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China continue to report on it.
Photo: Taipei Times
Meanwhile, Chinese actress Fang Bingbing (范冰冰) has sued renowned Chinese playwright and film critic Bi Chenggong (畢成功) and a Guizhou-based news blog over allegations that she was the “mastermind” behind the Zhang sex scandal rumors.
Bi made a post on his microblog that suggested Fang was a notorious rabble rouser and had planned for months to spread the rumors before the release of Dangerous Liaisons (危險關係), a film starring Zhang that was shown at the Cannes Film Festival last month. Netizens speculated that the rumors were behind her absence from the festival.
Repeatedly denying the rumors, Fang has filed a defamation suit against Bi to the tune of NT$2.5 million.
Photo: Taipei Times
While some of Asia’s celebutantes are fighting off rumors of sexual impropriety (surprise, surprise), others are fighting off overzealous fans. S.H.E member Ella Chen (陳嘉樺) was stabbed by a female fan in France last week, reported the United Daily News.
The recently married Chen was in Paris with her cosmetics executive husband Alvin Lai (賴斯翔), who was on a business trip, when a fan approached the 30 year old while posting pictures of her trip on her Facebook account in a cafe.
The “lunatic,” as the popular singer later said, got angry when Chen refused to give her an interview or sign autographs, and lunged at her with a pen, stabbing her in the chest. She then drew on Chen’s left arm.
But Chen took it in her stride. Though shaken by the incident, warning other celebrities to “be careful,” she still took time out to meet up with fans for a photo session.
Crazy fans are something Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) knows something about. After arriving at an airport in Chongqing, China at the end of last month on her way to Beijing, the pop diva was accosted by an overzealous male fan.
“Jolin Tsai, I love you,” he bellowed as he attempted to wrap his arms around the songstress, according to NOWnews.
Though other assembled fans were clearly peeved by the fanboys’ presumptuous behavior, Tsai for her part laughed off the “attack.”
She was later quoted as saying that she was less concerned for her safety than the fan being blacklisted by other fans.
Meanwhile, the vernacular media have been reporting the possibility that bible-thumping chick magnet Van Ness Wu (吳建豪) might be getting hitched to on-again-off-again girlfriend Arissa Cheo (姚之寧).
The couple first hooked up in 2006 when Cheo helped Wu film a music video, but amicably broke up a year later. After getting back together in 2010, Wu allegedly proposed, only to be rebuffed by the Singaporean sweetheart’s parents because of his job as entertainer.
NOWnews reported that Wu had finally proposed to Cheo at the end of last month in Singapore. But he put the kibosh on the rumors this week.
“I’ll share the good news when it comes,” he said in a statement.
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
On Facebook a friend posted a dashcam video of a vehicle driving through the ash-colored wasteland of what was once Taroko Gorge. A crane appears in the video, and suddenly it becomes clear: the video is in color, not black and white. The magnitude 7.2 earthquake’s destruction on April 3 around and above Taroko and its reverberations across an area heavily dependent on tourism have largely vanished from the international press discussions as the news cycle moves on, but local residents still live with its consequences every day. For example, with the damage to the road corridors between Yilan and
May 13 to May 19 While Taiwanese were eligible to take the Qing Dynasty imperial exams starting from 1686, it took more than a century for a locally-registered scholar to pass the highest levels and become a jinshi (進士). In 1823, Hsinchu City resident Cheng Yung-hsi (鄭用錫) traveled to Beijing and accomplished the feat, returning home in great glory. There were technically three Taiwan residents who did it before Cheng, but two were born in China and remained registered in their birthplaces, while historians generally discount the third as he changed his residency back to Fujian Province right after the exams.
Few scenes are more representative of rural Taiwan than a mountain slope covered in row upon row of carefully manicured tea plants. Like staring at the raked sand in a Zen garden, seeing these natural features in an unnaturally perfect arrangement of parallel lines has a certain calming effect. Snapping photos of the tea plantations blanketing Taiwan’s mountain is a favorite activity among tourists but, unfortunately, the experience is often rather superficial. As these tea fields are part of working farms, it’s not usually possible to walk amongst them or sample the teas they are producing, much less understand how the