Jacky Wu (吳宗憲), who's made a career as a TV comedian, dropped probably the biggest joke of his life last week when he announced his possible contention on an independent ticket for a legislative seat to represent Taipei's southern district in elections set for November. The only things holding him back at this stage, he told media this week, were his father's and wife's objections.
As for his colorful record of public philandering and most recently driving drunk without a license, these don't seem to raise any questions in his mind about possible doubts voters may have about his trustworthiness when it comes to formulating national policy and handling their tax money. In fact, he has a couple of policy ideas of his own. He's quoted as telling media that his first mission, if elected, will be to get all paparazzi kicked out of Taiwan, singling out Next Magazine (壹週刊) and Apple Daily (蘋果日報) as targets of his impending media purge.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Part of what prompted his legislative bid is Jacky's current court case against a fan named Linda, who revealed an affair to Next Magazine, she alleges to have had with the TV host. So far, the case remains undecided, but if that one fails, there's always the one brought by his wife against Linda, who once wrote a song for pop singer Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒), that accuses Linda of trying to harm the Wu family.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
This week Ella of the pop group S.H.E. spent several days refuting a report on a Chinese Web site that "revealed" that she was previously a boy until a sex change made her a girl. Responding to the minor storm kicked up over the report, she told the Liberty Times (自由時報): "Yeah, I'm a boy. Why don't I just pull it out right here and pee on the floor?" She was joking, of course, but the tom-boyish Ella has been deflecting rumors about her sexual orientation since the group was formed a couple years ago.
More sex organs were in the news this week when Hong Kong singer/actor Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒) was reported to have had a diamond stud penis ring. In an odd echo of Ella's comment, Nicholas sarcastically quipped to The Great Daily News (
Tse is currently in Beijing on the set of Chen Kaige's (陳凱歌) next film The Promise (無極), which will also star his erstwhile lover Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝). According to the Taiwan Daily, Cheung will mark a first in her film career in this movie with two full nudity scenes that she insisted on filming herself instead of having a body double. Tse won't be the man shooting the nude scenes with Cheung, though. That task will fall on the broad, tanned shoulders of South Korean actor Jang Dong-kun (張東建) and Hiroyuki Sanada.
Last week, TV hostess Big S proved that it's not just poor people who play the lottery when she hit a jackpot worth NT$140,000. It wasn't the NT$900 million that was up for grabs, but it still made her feel rich enough to give assistants at the studio NT$20,000 and use the rest to take her long-time boyfriend Lan Cheng-long (
From the last quarter of 2001, research shows that real housing prices nearly tripled (before a 2012 law to enforce housing price registration, researchers tracked a few large real estate firms to estimate housing price behavior). Incomes have not kept pace, though this has not yet led to defaults. Instead, an increasing chunk of household income goes to mortgage payments. This suggests that even if incomes grow, the mortgage squeeze will still make voters feel like their paychecks won’t stretch to cover expenses. The housing price rises in the last two decades are now driving higher rents. The rental market
July 21 to July 27 If the “Taiwan Independence Association” (TIA) incident had happened four years earlier, it probably wouldn’t have caused much of an uproar. But the arrest of four young suspected independence activists in the early hours of May 9, 1991, sparked outrage, with many denouncing it as a return to the White Terror — a time when anyone could be detained for suspected seditious activity. Not only had martial law been lifted in 1987, just days earlier on May 1, the government had abolished the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist
When life gives you trees, make paper. That was one of the first thoughts to cross my mind as I explored what’s now called Chung Hsing Cultural and Creative Park (中興文化創意園區, CHCCP) in Yilan County’s Wujie Township (五結). Northeast Taiwan boasts an abundance of forest resources. Yilan County is home to both Taipingshan National Forest Recreation Area (太平山國家森林遊樂區) — by far the largest reserve of its kind in the country — and Makauy Ecological Park (馬告生態園區, see “Towering trees and a tranquil lake” in the May 13, 2022 edition of this newspaper). So it was inevitable that industrial-scale paper making would
Hualien lawmaker Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) is the prime target of the recall campaigns. They want to bring him and everything he represents crashing down. This is an existential test for Fu and a critical symbolic test for the campaigners. It is also a crucial test for both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a personal one for party Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫). Why is Fu such a lightning rod? LOCAL LORD At the dawn of the 2020s, Fu, running as an independent candidate, beat incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and a KMT candidate to return to the legislature representing
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