The big news last week in entertainment was the Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎), which hand out gongs to the best and brightest members of Taiwan’s music industry. The award ceremony has appeared slightly shopworn in recent years, and TV ratings for the televised live event have been nothing to shout about. This year, the Golden Melody awards have made a bit of a comeback. Now in its 23rd iteration, the ceremony hosted by Micky Huang (黃子佼) and busty actress Tien Hsin (天心), garnered an audience estimated at 533,000, and ratings of 5.77, the highest overall score for this event in 12 years. In 2009, ratings for the high profile event dropped to just 3.83, despite the presence of veteran hosts Momoko Tao (陶晶瑩) and sexy news anchor Patty Hou (侯佩岑).
The popularity of the show was enhanced by the return of S.H.E, a girl group that had a massive presence in the last decade, and whose members Selina (任家萱), Hebe (田馥甄) and Ella (陳嘉樺) have all embarked on successful solo careers since. Selina, who suffered terrible burns during an on-set accident in China, has brought the group back into the limelight, and their performance of Super Star was an emotional high point in the ceremony.
Another bit of effective nostalgia was the return of Fong Fei-fei (鳳飛飛) to the stage. A megastar whose career spanned almost three decades, Fong, who died in January this year, appeared on stage as a 3D hologram to perform I Am A Cloud (我是一片雲) to the delight of the audience.
Photo: Taipei Times
The big winner at this year’s event was May Day (五月天), who took away six awards. There have been various veiled suggestions that the group might be splitting up, with Ashin (阿信, aka 陳信宏) saying at the ceremony that their award winning album Second Round (第二人生) would be their third to last as a band.
At a recent event where the band visited schools to promote environmental causes, bassist Masa (瑪莎) said: “We are not about to all go solo, but everyone is living on their own, and everyone has a different direction they want to develop their careers. We all have different personalities, and want to do different things.” He suggested that band members might go their separate ways, and after a period of development, regroup as a stronger lineup than ever. Of May Day’s six awards, Masa picked up Best Composer.
In the battle for the much coveted best female singer (Mandarin), the competition was between veterans A-Mei (阿妹) and Tanya Tsai (蔡健雅), both of whom have three wins in this category. At the end of the night, it was Tsai who took the prize. Speaking about the results, music industry commentator Andy Wang (王介安) suggested that some of A-Mei’s recently released songs did not fit her singing style. He added that while Tsai had not been in perfect form this year, even the faults in her singing style were beautiful in their own way. Responding to these comments, A-Mei’s manager Chen Cheng-chuan (陳鎮川) said that “while some of the songs may not at first appear to suit A-Mei, they were attempts by the singer to explore new territory.”
The best male singer award was picked-up, in a huge upset victory, by A-Hsiang of Luantan (亂彈阿翔), who beat off a horde of pretty boys including the Chairman himself, Jay Chou (周杰倫). After failing to pick up the best song award for his hit single Perfect Landing (完美落地), A-Hsing said that he had indulged in a few drinks and was preparing to go home to bed when his victory in the best singer category was announced, catching him unprepared. This was another victory for rock’n’roll over Mando-pop crooners, who tend to dominate the mainstream pop charts.
Pop Stop would not be complete without a little bit of romantic news, so its delightful to discover Edison Chen (陳冠希) is once again on the prowl for beautiful women. He has been posting a variety of yearning, burning posts on Sino.com’s micro blog lauding the desirability of Chinese actress Wei Tang (湯唯). “I just love her so much,” he wrote. “Will someone tell her that for me.” Many of Tang’s fans have already responded, asking the notorious lothario to give Tang a break and leave her alone, and suggesting that he has been watching Lust/Caution and wants to make a sequel with himself as the star.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
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