For Lin Shao-hua (林少華), the strenuous physical training over the last two months all became worthwhile when he was named first runner-up in the “Mister Physique” category in the annual 2008 Manhunt International last Monday.
Lin, a 25 year-old gym instructor from the Atayal tribe, was the third Taiwanese man to win a prestigious award at an international male beauty contest.
Lin said yesterday that when contenders from other countries first saw him, they often mistook him as Latin American because of his sculpted muscles and tanned skin.
PHOTO: HSIEH WEN-HUA, TAIPEI TIMES
“When I said I am from Taiwan, they often found it surprising,” Lin said, “because many foreigners still have the stereotype that Taiwanese male models are often tall, skinny and pale.”
Two months prior to the competition, Lin trained for three hours each day and maintained a strict high-protein low carbohydrate diet. To burn the extra fat off his body, Lin said he often did his jogging routine wearing heavy jackets and long pants so he would “sweat it out.”
Lin said he was able to shed 10kg using his self-designed regimen.
Manhunt International is the largest male-model beauty pageant in the world. The competition is made up of two phases. An online contest was held for voting on all contenders.
The top 15 winners from the online competition were then eligible to participate in the on-stage competition.
Lin did not get any votes at first, but won more than 23,900 votes and placed seventh after the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) reported on his endeavor to win the competition.
A senior at Yuan Ze University, Hsu Poh-hsiang (�?�), won the “best newcomer and best traditional costume” award in last year’s International Man Competition, and Hung Chi-feng (洪啟峰) of the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, clinched the “Most Popular” award in the 2008 Mr. Universe Model competition.
Hsu, however, refused to accept his award because organizers tried to force him to participate as “Mr. China” instead of “Mr. Republic of China.”
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
TAIWAN ISSUE: US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on the first day of meetings that ‘it wouldn’t be a US-China summit without the Taiwan issue coming up’ There were no surprises on the first day of the summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday, as the government reiterated that cross-strait stability is crucial to the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the world. As the two presidents met for a highly anticipated summit yesterday, Chinese state media reported that Xi warned Trump that missteps regarding Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict.” Trump arrived in China with accolades for his host, calling Xi a “great leader” and “friend,” and extending an invitation to visit the White House
RSS