Where to start with Hsu Chun-mei
Late last year, Hsu made her first appearance in the news when her five-year-old daughter was found abandoned at a shopping center and she said she'd left the child there because the kid was noisy and annoying. Hsu refused to take the child back into her care.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Inexplicably, she parlayed this moment of fame into appearances on TV talk shows and variety shows, where she noisily held court on topics she is entirely unqualified to talk about and generally made an ass of herself in her hilariously accented Mandarin.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Because no one knew where she'd come from and would ask her about her background, Hsu would fill in the blanks by saying she was from a very rich family in "society's upper crust," earning her the sarcastic moniker "upper-crust beauty" (
Without much to distinguish herself, Hsu has become a TV sensation merely by her flagrant and obnoxious self-promoting style, her bawdy outfits and her penchant for shooting her mouth off, which has drawn fire from practically everyone she's encountered, except for Zhang Fei (
Jacky Wu (
Hoping to capitalize on all the hype, SuperTV has signed Hsu as co-anchor and news analyst on the channel's 6pm news show. But the Broadcasting Development Fund (
Leon Lai (
The Chinese-language film that's creating the most waves of late, though, is Cellphone (
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built
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