Public Television Service (
PTS won in 11 award categories. The best lead actor honor went to Chang Chen-kuang (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
The awards ceremony took place last night at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei, and opened with a star-studded red-carpet walk that drew hundreds of fans.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Croatian pianist Maksim, Korean actors Ahn Jae-wook and Ha Ji-won, both of whom have large fan bases in Taiwan for their TV dramas, pop diva Stefanie Sun (
The four-hour gala event was hosted by Kevin Tsai (
PTS demonstrated its power for producing quality programs at the Golden Bell Awards -- Taiwan's answer to the Emmy Awards -- especially in drama and cultural programming.
The TV company took home four awards for its programs, including the best TV drama Banquet (
PTS won 18 award categories at Golden Bell Awards last year, well ahead of all the other TV stations in Taiwan.
In the variety show categories, Taiwan's veteran TV host Chang Fei (張菲) won the award for the best TV host for variety shows for his popular show Variety Big Brother (綜藝大哥大). The award for best variety program, however, went to Variety Sum-up (綜藝大集合).
Having hosted TV shows for 30 years, Chang expressed his gratitude to all his guests who have been entertained and "tortured" in his shows. He also gave thanks to his alleged girlfriend from Belarus, Margarita, who serves as the assistant hostess and comedienne in his show.
Taiwan has next to no political engagement in Myanmar, either with the ruling military junta nor the dozens of armed groups who’ve in the last five years taken over around two-thirds of the nation’s territory in a sprawling, patchwork civil war. But early last month, the leader of one relatively minor Burmese revolutionary faction, General Nerdah Bomya, who is also an alleged war criminal, made a low key visit to Taipei, where he met with a member of President William Lai’s (賴清德) staff, a retired Taiwanese military official and several academics. “I feel like Taiwan is a good example of
March 2 to March 8 Gunfire rang out along the shore of the frontline island of Lieyu (烈嶼) on a foggy afternoon on March 7, 1987. By the time it was over, about 20 unarmed Vietnamese refugees — men, women, elderly and children — were dead. They were hastily buried, followed by decades of silence. Months later, opposition politicians and journalists tried to uncover what had happened, but conflicting accounts only deepened the confusion. One version suggested that government troops had mistakenly killed their own operatives attempting to return home from Vietnam. The military maintained that the
“M yeolgong jajangmyeon (anti-communism zhajiangmian, 滅共炸醬麵), let’s all shout together — myeolgong!” a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Dongtan, located about 35km south of Seoul, South Korea, calls out before serving a bowl of Korean-style zhajiangmian —black bean noodles. Diners repeat the phrase before tucking in. This political-themed restaurant, named Myeolgong Banjeom (滅共飯館, “anti-communism restaurant”), is operated by a single person and does not take reservations; therefore long queues form regularly outside, and most customers appear sympathetic to its political theme. Photos of conservative public figures hang on the walls, alongside political slogans and poems written in Chinese characters; South
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) announced last week a city policy to get businesses to reduce working hours to seven hours per day for employees with children 12 and under at home. The city promised to subsidize 80 percent of the employees’ wage loss. Taipei can do this, since the Celestial Dragon Kingdom (天龍國), as it is sardonically known to the denizens of Taiwan’s less fortunate regions, has an outsize grip on the government budget. Like most subsidies, this will likely have little effect on Taiwan’s catastrophic birth rates, though it may be a relief to the shrinking number of