If only Pop Stop could have been in Beijing last weekend for Jay Chou's (周杰倫) stadium concert. The show sounds like a comedy of the type only China is capable of cooking up.
Showing a distinctly mainland-Chinese penchant for projects on a massive scale, the organizers set up an enormous stage covering half the Beijing Workers' Stadium, which can seat 85,000 people. So normally that would mean that about 40,000 people could enter. But, not surprisingly, thousands of people had purchased fake tickets for seats located in roped-off areas or somewhere under the stage. They were allowed into the venue but thousands ended up standing in the aisles.
The Workers' Stadium tends to bring out the worst in Beijing's rowdy soccer fans and that unseemly tradition seemed to rub off on Jay's fans when they started pelting him and the dancers with glow sticks during a, by all accounts, stirring rendition of an old Teresa Deng (鄧麗君) song. Luckily for Jay things weren't likely to get any more violent than that because local authorities had mobilized around 5,000 officers from the Public Security Bureau, the notoriously rough Chinese police force, to keep everyone in line. The security presence may seem a bit heavy handed, but then it's China, where hyped-up crowds have overthrown regimes many times before. And you can never be too cautious with those unruly teeny boppers.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
In Shanghai, meanwhile, a Taiwanese star of a different kind has wandered into local people's crosshairs. Chu Mei-feng (璩美鳳), the former director of Hsinchu County's cultural affairs bureau and the central figure in a salacious sex, lies and videotape scandal that earned her world-wide fame two years ago, has been accused by Shanghai media of having been admitted to Fudan University's business administration doctoral program through favoritism instead of good test scores. Local media published her test results, which in three key test subjects didn't exceed 50 percent. Chu and the school insist the admission is fair -- even for people who've had their lovemaking filmed and spread around the world on the Internet.
It seems a lot of strange things happen on the Internet. Pop Stop's favorite whipping boy Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒) committed suicide this week, if we're to believe China's popular NetEase Web site. The site reported that the singer/actor had jumped off the 34th floor of a building in Hong Kong's Central district to his death. According to Apple Daily, when told about the mistake, Nicholas had only this to say: "If I died, who would show up at the memorial concert for Leslie Cheung (張國榮)."
In another display of the power of the Internet, A-hsian (阿賢), the male actor in the Taiwan Plumber (台灣水電工) porno, which is frequently described as the first hard-core Taiwanese porn movie, has started selling his own second-hand clothes on Yahoo's auction site, hoping his fans will pay top NT dollar to wear his briefs. He's also planning to release a nude photo collection book next month.
Speaking of porn, several local papers reported this week on a film company that recently released a smut film featuring "A-mei" (阿妹). Of course, the diva we commonly associate with that name isn't the A-mei featured in the movie, but the published stills bear an uncanny resemblance. In reality, the actress is Japanese.
If you want to see the real A-mei, along with Sun Yanzi (孫燕姿), eVonne (許慧欣), Vivian Hsu (徐若瑄) and Jackie Cheung (張學友), then head down to CKS Memorial Hall tomorrow night at 7pm for a benefit concert to celebrate TVBS's 10-year anniversary. This will be Yanzi's last concert before she steps out of show business for a year, as announced last month.
The Portuguese never established a presence on Taiwan, but they must have traded with the indigenous people because later traders reported that the locals referred to parts of deer using Portuguese words. What goods might the Portuguese have offered their indigenous trade partners? Among them must have been slaves, for the Portuguese dealt slaves across Asia. Though we often speak of “Portuguese” ships, imagining them as picturesque vessels manned by pointy-bearded Iberians, in Asia Portuguese shipping between local destinations was crewed by Asian seamen, with a handful of white or Eurasian officers. “Even the great carracks of 1,000-2,000 tons which plied
It’s only half the size of its more famous counterpart in Taipei, but the Botanical Garden of the National Museum of Nature Science (NMNS, 國立自然科學博物館植物園) is surely one of urban Taiwan’s most inviting green spaces. Covering 4.5 hectares immediately northeast of the government-run museum in Taichung’s North District (北區), the garden features more than 700 plant species, many of which are labeled in Chinese but not in English. Since its establishment in 1999, the site’s managers have done their best to replicate a number of native ecosystems, dividing the site into eight areas. The name of the Coral Atoll Zone might
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Nuclear power is getting a second look in Southeast Asia as countries prepare to meet surging energy demand as they vie for artificial intelligence-focused data centers. Several Southeast Asian nations are reviving mothballed nuclear plans and setting ambitious targets and nearly half of the region could, if they pursue those goals, have nuclear energy in the 2030s. Even countries without current plans have signaled their interest. Southeast Asia has never produced a single watt of nuclear energy, despite long-held atomic ambitions. But that may soon change as pressure mounts to reduce emissions that contribute to climate change, while meeting growing power needs. The
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