This week Pop Stop is scooping the competition with news that Jay Chou (周杰倫) is looking West to develop his career and conquer the world of entertainment. Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and even Japan are all in the grip of Chou-mania after the success of last year's seminal album of "chinked-out music," November's Chopin and his movie Initial D.
Our spies in Beijing (where Chou is making a video and said to be pub crawling) have picked up an interesting posting in the online edition of That's Beijing magazine. In the help-wanted section there is an ad for an English teacher from "yida86."
"For those that don't know, Jay Zhou [sic] is a very famous singer from Taiwan" and wants "to find a part-time tutor that can help him improve his oral English."
Requirements for the job include being a native English speaker, "preferably female and with a good sense of humor" who speaks some Mandarin. "This is a great [opportunity] for someone to meet with and teach a famous celeb and get paid in the process."
Those who have met "The Chairman" report that his English is currently pretty poor, so it looks like a long-term project. Perhaps he was inspired by the example of South Korea's Rain, who has an English tutor trailing him around at all times for impromptu lessons?
It could be that she's desperate to plug her latest album, but A-mei (
TANK is the newest boy on the block, hitting the number one spot in G-Music's local pop chart with the album The Way to Survive (
Tomorrow, TANK should earn a little more for his scheduled appearance at Luxy with Mojo.
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It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
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