King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), a long-time adviser to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), on Wednesday denied media speculation that he and the president had developed a “Brokeback” relationship.
The term comes from Taiwan-born Hollywood director Ang Lee’s (李安) Academy Award-winning film Brokeback Mountain (斷背山), which tells of a secretive homosexual relationship between two cowboys.
At a question-and-answer session after a speech on cross-strait relations, King, a former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) secretary-general and now the top adviser of the KMT’s international affairs department, responded to media speculation about the nature of his personal relationship with Ma.
Photo: CNA
When asked if a public figure like him should take legal action against the media over speculation on such topics as his personal relationship with Ma, King said that some people in Taiwan believed he and the president were in a romantic relationship.
“My wife is such a beautiful woman that not even someone with just a high-school education would believe [that I’m gay],” he said. “I respect each individual’s sexual orientation, but I am not ‘Brokeback’ [gay],” he added.
King also denied speculation that he never visits Republic of China founding father Sun Yat-sen’s (孫逸仙) mausoleum in Nanjing to pay tribute because he is a descendant of an imperial clan of the Qing Dynasty, which was toppled by revolutionaries led by Sun.
He said he has visited Nanjing before and it was absolute nonsense to say that he has not visited the mausoleum because of his background.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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