Family values were at the fore this week with news about no less than five pop-star couples either having kids, expecting kids or tying the knot.
Taiwanese pop singer Richie Ren (任賢齊) announced this week that his long-time girlfriend Tina is now eight months pregnant and will give birth some time next month. They were mum on speculation that they were "first getting on the bus and buying a ticket later" -- meaning to have a kid and then get married. But The Great Entertainment Daily (大成報) claims to have knowledge that the pair were actually married two years ago, abroad, but simply haven't registered the marriage in Taiwan yet.
With all the hoopla over the rumored marriage between Faye Wong (王菲) and Li Yapeng (李亞鵬) as cover, Li's erstwhile girlfriend, singer/actress Zhou Xun (周迅) has reportedly quietly tied the knot between herself and her boyfriend of several years, the Taiwanese stylist Lee Da-chi (李大齊).
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Chang Fei's (張菲) favorite Belorussian, Margarita, with whom he has been filmed in all kinds of intimate poses and
situations, poured ice on the geri-curled ladies man's hopes by announcing this week that she is already married and has been now for four years. The husband is Taiwanese and the two no longer live together. Nevertheless, ever the gentleman, Chang said he would no longer put the moves on Margarita because he doesn't chase married women. "We're through," he's quoted as saying in the Apple Daily (
Hong Kong pop sensation Jackie Cheung (張學友) dropped a bomb this week by revealing to media that his wife had a baby daughter on March 8. Amazingly, Hong Kong's notoriously snooping media -- they've lately been camping outside his younger daughter's school hoping for pictures of her -- were shut out from any word of the birth until this week.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
And actress Lee Chien-rong (李篟蓉) took the rumor out of the talk of her second pregnancy by confirming that she's indeed expecting, but declined to say when the next member of the family would be making an appearance.
Today is the long-anticipated release of The Wayward Cloud (天邊一朵雲), Tsai Ming-liang's (蔡明亮) latest film. Pop Stop has heard through the grapevine that the movie is yet another self-indulgent piece of art-house masturbation, but that this time there's plenty of sex, which might explain why it will show on 40 screens all around Taiwan and has received more column inches of coverage than probably all his previous movies combined. This is in contrast to last year's Golden Horse winner Kekexili (可可西里), a truly masterful Chinese film, beautifully shot and with more powerful messages that was shown on a paltry two screens in Taipei (see reviews on page 17).
Forbes magazine released its annual list of richest and most famous people in China this week, with NBA star Yao Ming (姚明) at the top, followed by Zhang Ziyi (章子怡), then the Olympic hurdles cannonball Liu Xiang (劉翔), then Vicki Zhao (趙薇) and Faye Wong in fifth place.
PHOTO: AP
After an almost three-year absence, Coco Lee (李玟) is back with a new album, but not in Chinese this time. Back in her native US, the singer is releasing her second English-language album, this time with special editions set to be released in India and South Korea, each with tracks by stars from those countries.
Many people noticed the flood of pro-China propaganda across a number of venues in recent weeks that looks like a coordinated assault on US Taiwan policy. It does look like an effort intended to influence the US before the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) over the weekend. Jennifer Kavanagh’s piece in the New York Times in September appears to be the opening strike of the current campaign. She followed up last week in the Lowy Interpreter, blaming the US for causing the PRC to escalate in the Philippines and Taiwan, saying that as
Taiwan can often feel woefully behind on global trends, from fashion to food, and influences can sometimes feel like the last on the metaphorical bandwagon. In the West, suddenly every burger is being smashed and honey has become “hot” and we’re all drinking orange wine. But it took a good while for a smash burger in Taipei to come across my radar. For the uninitiated, a smash burger is, well, a normal burger patty but smashed flat. Originally, I didn’t understand. Surely the best part of a burger is the thick patty with all the juiciness of the beef, the
This year’s Miss Universe in Thailand has been marred by ugly drama, with allegations of an insult to a beauty queen’s intellect, a walkout by pageant contestants and a tearful tantrum by the host. More than 120 women from across the world have gathered in Thailand, vying to be crowned Miss Universe in a contest considered one of the “big four” of global beauty pageants. But the runup has been dominated by the off-stage antics of the coiffed contestants and their Thai hosts, escalating into a feminist firestorm drawing the attention of Mexico’s president. On Tuesday, Mexican delegate Fatima Bosch staged a
The ultimate goal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the total and overwhelming domination of everything within the sphere of what it considers China and deems as theirs. All decision-making by the CCP must be understood through that lens. Any decision made is to entrench — or ideally expand that power. They are fiercely hostile to anything that weakens or compromises their control of “China.” By design, they will stop at nothing to ensure that there is no distinction between the CCP and the Chinese nation, people, culture, civilization, religion, economy, property, military or government — they are all subsidiary
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