Just one day after its grand opening, the CA Club Cafe, the latest top-end nightspot for Taipei’s glitterati, was ordered to close down — and with that, entertainer Eric Suen (孫耀威) lost his NT$35 million (US$1.18 million) investment.
It was a dramatic turn of events for the club on the second floor of Breeze Center Mall on Fuxing S Road, which had held a star-studded gala on Tuesday.
Workers arrived on Wednesday to tear down the luxury decor and lounges.
Warning: Excessive alcohol consumption can damage your health.
Photo: Hu Shun-hsiang, Taipei Times
Officials from Taipei City’s Construction Management Office said they received a tipoff on Monday informing them that the opulent nightclub had been constructed illegally.
The office dispatched inspectors to the club on Wednesday, who determined that it was an illegal structure.
Officials said the club’s 100m2 interior was illegally built on the open deck of the mall’s second floor.
“We ordered the proprietors to dismantle the whole structure, including the interior decorations, and also declared its operation terminated,” a Construction Management Office staffer said.
To prevent the club’s owners from evading the demolition order, inspectors remained on site to monitor the operation, up until the whole structure was dismantled at about 9pm on Wednesday.
Suen, a native of Hong Kong, began his singing career in the early 1990s. The 40-year-old entertainer makes frequent appearances in Taiwan and has said he loves its friendly people and culture.
Suen recently said he planned to purchase a home in Taipei and would invest tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars to open a nightclub here.
“I want to introduce the vogue fashion trends of the US and Europe to Taiwan,” he said.
Suen basked in the limelight of Tuesday’s gala, which attracted crowds from the entertainment and fashion industries, including French fashion designer Christian Audigier, originator of the CA Club Cafe concept.
Suen arrived for the gala in a red Ferrari Coupe.
Club proprietors had told reporters that the club would be Taipei’s top-class nightclub, drawing comparisons with Hollywood’s Sky Bar.
The club’s Web site said “CA Club Cafe is ready to import the most authentic Hollywood nightlife culture to Asia.”
Local media reports said the club’s luxury image was expected to be a big draw, despite its expensive prices. The club was charging NT$20,000 for private parties on the premiere balcony and NT$12,000 for the outdoor lounges.
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