The annual musical pilgrimage to Spring Scream has come to an end and Kenting is once again restored to its tropical quiet. But on a peaceful, breezy early Monday morning on the beach, singer Shino Lin (林曉培), a guest musician at the festival, was spotted lying on top of a rugged young man in after-party languor, near a group of dozens of people enjoying a beautiful sunrise and camp fire. As the sun got higher and warmer, the seemingly wasted singer finally got up but could barely walk without her friends coming to her aid.
Later that day, Shino
confirmed to the Apple Daily (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Another couple wasn't so lucky to get away from the watchful eyes of the media so easily. The questionable extramarital affair between the former TVBS sportscaster Cheng Sheng-hung (陳勝鴻) and TVBS-N news channel anchorwoman Pan Yen-fei (潘彥妃) has dominated the gossip pages for two consecutive weeks now. It's impossible to get away from the media hype even if you try.
Accused by one of his many ex-girlfriends -- a woman identified as Miss Lin -- that he videotapes his sexual encounters without his partner's consent, Cheng has changed his testimony back and forth, saying once that Pan was fully aware when the intimate pictures of them kissing and cuddling were taken, but saying something totally different later.
Most of the main characters in this show have been telling their self-contradictory, fabricated stories while following their instincts for self-preservation. But Pan is refusing to play the leading lady in the soap opera any more. The married anchorwoman quit her job right after the affair was exposed and intimate photos took up the front pages of every local newspaper. She left a confessional note to the public last Friday, saying in a tortured, heart-broken tone, ``I've left Taiwan and won't be back for a long long time. I will vanish in silence.''
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Not every love story is X-rated and promiscuous. Hong Kong's sweetheart Lin Jia-xin (林嘉欣) blew a refreshing breeze into the gossip scene when she was spotted going to a musical with her musician boyfriend, Chen Guang-rong (陳光容). Wearing jeans, sneakers and black-framed glasses, the star looked even prettier without traces of make-up. Rumor has it that Lin's agent got really pissed at her high-profile romance and decided to ``freeze'' her. The smiling young actress denied the freeze talks, saying she is just taking a break from her busy schedule and has been having a great time with her honey.
It was recently reported that Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武) has an evil brother living on the dark side, who owes the Taiwanese mafia a huge debt and has been on the lam for a while now. The star is following the code of secrecy, or "omerta," about the affair and at a recent beauty-product endorsement press conference in Shanghai on Tuesday, the organizer got really nervous about a possible confrontation between the media and the star, deciding to limit reporters to five questions each. One local media member, however, broke the rules and popped the forbidden question. The princely star said nothing and gave a charming smile instead. Magically, everybody seemed melted by his angelic beauty and forgot he was just masterfully dodging the unwelcome subject.
On a harsh winter afternoon last month, 2,000 protesters marched and chanted slogans such as “CCP out” and “Korea for Koreans” in Seoul’s popular Gangnam District. Participants — mostly students — wore caps printed with the Chinese characters for “exterminate communism” (滅共) and held banners reading “Heaven will destroy the Chinese Communist Party” (天滅中共). During the march, Park Jun-young, the leader of the protest organizer “Free University,” a conservative youth movement, who was on a hunger strike, collapsed after delivering a speech in sub-zero temperatures and was later hospitalized. Several protesters shaved their heads at the end of the demonstration. A
The term “pirates” as used in Asia was a European term that, as scholar of Asian pirate history Robert J. Antony has observed, became globalized during the European colonial era. Indeed, European colonial administrators often contemptuously dismissed entire Asian peoples or polities as “pirates,” a term that in practice meant raiders not sanctioned by any European state. For example, an image of the American punitive action against the indigenous people in 1867 was styled in Harper’s Weekly as “Attack of United States Marines and Sailors on the pirates of the island of Formosa, East Indies.” The status of such raiders in
As much as I’m a mountain person, I have to admit that the ocean has a singular power to clear my head. The rhythmic push and pull of the waves is profoundly restorative. I’ve found that fixing my gaze on the horizon quickly shifts my mental gearbox into neutral. I’m not alone in savoring this kind of natural therapy, of course. Several locations along Taiwan’s coast — Shalun Beach (沙崙海水浴場) near Tamsui and Cisingtan (七星潭) in Hualien are two of the most famous — regularly draw crowds of sightseers. If you want to contemplate the vastness of the ocean in true
On paper, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) enters this year’s nine-in-one elections with almost nowhere to go but up. Yet, there are fears in the pan-green camp that they may not do much better then they did in 2022. Though the DPP did somewhat better at the city and county councillor level in 2022, at the “big six” municipality mayoral and county commissioner level, it was a disaster for the party. Then-president and party chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) made a string of serious strategic miscalculations that led to the party’s worst-ever result at the top executive level. That year, the party
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