Allegedly snubbed by the Taipei Cultural Foundation as not being “heavyweight” enough to make an appearance at the award ceremony at today’s Taipei Film Festival, veteran comedian Chu Ko Liang (豬哥亮) said he felt he had been trampled upon and that he would refuse to take part in this year’s Golden Bell Awards and Golden Horse Awards.
Taiwanese blockbuster Night Market Hero (雞排英雄), starring Chu and Blue Lan (藍正龍), is not being screened at the Taipei Film Festival.
When it became apparent Chu had not been invited to the award ceremony, Chinese Television System (CTS), the station producing the show, recommended that Chu be invited given his popularity and the good box office ratings of the film.
The Taipei Cultural Foundation reportedly rejected the station’s recommendation, saying Chu “is not heavyweight enough.”
Chu was furious upon being informed of the rejection and he appeared upset.
Prior to the recording of his weekly show Chu Ko Hui She (豬哥會社) on Wednesday, Chu was seen twisting and turning his right wrist, saying: “It feels like I’m going to have a stroke.”
In a self-deprecating manner, he said he should get fatter so he could be “heavyweight enough.”
Originally scheduled to be the host at the year-end Golden Horse Awards, Chu said he would not participate in the Golden Bell Awards or the Golden Horse Awards.
In response, Taipei Film Festival director Hu Yu-feng (胡幼鳳) said the whole thing was a misunderstanding, adding that “we would be overjoyed to have him [Chu].”
She admitted that the organizer did not extend an invitation to Chu, even after CTS broached the idea. A lack of action by both CTS and the organizer led to the misunderstanding, she said.
Hu said she had contacted Chu’s agent, Su Jui-huang (蘇瑞煌), to clear up the issue, while also extending an invitation for Chu to participate at the festival. Su, however, declined the offer, saying Chu would be preoccupied the whole day filming.
Translated by Jake Chung, Staff Writer
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching