Award-winning actor Ethan Ruan (阮經天) offered to apologize for upsetting a neighbor with his loud parties, but said he would have preferred to keep the dispute out of the media, which have feasted on the story.
A neighbor of the 28-year-old model-turned-actor recently complained publicly that Ruan’s frequent all-night parties at his Taipei apartment had made it impossible for her son to sleep.
Following up on the complaint, local media reported that Ruan and his girlfriend, Tiffany Hsu (許瑋甯), a model and actress, regularly hold boisterous mahjong parties on weekends and holidays.
Responding to the complaint yesterday, Ruan did not deny holding noisy bashes, but said that if his lifestyle inconvenienced his neighbor in any way, he was willing to apologize and do his best to keep the noise down.
“However, she could have come and told me face to face instead of exposing it to the media,” he said.
Ruan purchased the two-level rooftop apartment last year for NT$20 million (US$688,700) and the space has become a popular hangout among his friends.
Ruan, a Taichung native, made a name for himself in 2008 when he starred in a romantic television series, Fated to Love You (命中注定我愛你), with TV sweetheart Joe Chen (陳喬恩). The drama was an instant hit, even catching the attention of the Wall Street Journal.
His career hit a high point last year when he won a Golden Horse for his depiction of a Wanhua District (萬華) hoodlum in the blockbuster gangster flick Monga (艋舺), which was Taiwan’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film at last year’s Academy Awards.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift