When Tourism Bureau Director-General Janice Lai (
"Allow me to keep it a secret for now," she told reporters at the time. "Let me just say that it is going to be a male entertainer and a female singer. I promise it will be a huge surprise!"
But what was meant to be a surprise turned into an unexpected cat-out-of-bag incident. Lai was upset yesterday to find out that local media had unveiled the "secret" before she did.
A report in the Chinese-language Apple Daily yesterday said that Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), who won the Golden Melody Award for best female Mandarin pop singer last week, has been selected to be the bureau's new tourism spokesperson in Southeast Asia.
The report also mentioned that Tsai and film director Wu Nien-jen (
It also said that the bureau would pay Tsai NT$8 million (US$242,400) per year for the deal.
The bureau's contract with A-mei ended this year. During the past three years, the diva participated in tourism-related promotional events in Southeast Asia, from meeting with fans to leading them on an around-the-nation tour.
The momentum A-mei generated encouraged the Tourism Bureau to consider choosing another popular singer to be the new spokesperson this year.
Lai ordered her staff yesterday to investigate the leak and find out why the news was released to the media before the scheduled date, which was today.
The incident was reminiscent of the Golden Melody Awards' problems, as both events have had their lists of winners leaked to the media before the organizer could make an official announcement.
To increase tourism each year, the bureau has recruited popular idols as part of tourism promotion package. Last week, it announced that the boy-band F4 had become the bureau's emissaries in Japan and South Korea.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
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