The wave of police raids and accusations of drug use continued this past week with Little Pan-pan (小潘潘) holding a press conference to rebut a report in the United Daily News that her phone number was found on the mobile phone of an associate of alleged drug kingpin Wang Feng-yu (王豐裕).
"First, I don't use drugs," she said at the press conference. "Secondly, I don't know any of Wang Feng-yu's associates." As Little Pan-pan has a sterling reputation of discretion, Pop Stop fully accepts her explanation. Not.
Meanwhile, Suzanne Hsiao (蕭淑慎), Taiwan's answer to Amy Winehouse, gave an exclusive interview to the Apple Daily in which she denied having a drug problem. Her interview came in response to the recent discovery by police of 30.4g of cocaine and 2g of ketamine in her rented apartment.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
"I'm not a druggie," she said in an article featuring images of her wrist complete with marks suggestive of suicide attempts. "I don't have an addiction. I just wanted to have fun on my birthday and didn't know I would get busted." Unsurprisingly, Hsiao vowed to stay on the straight and narrow. Curiously, there was no talk of entering a rehabilitation center, as she has to wait for public prosecutors to decide her fate.
In other drug-related news, Pei Lin (裴琳) might have bawled in front of the camera in an attempt to salvage her career after admitting to smoking pot, but she is getting kudos from the blogosphere for her portrayal of a lesbian in a music video, supposedly a first for Taiwan. In two scenes, the music video features Lin in a passionate embrace with singer Olivia Yan (閻韋伶), who just released an album called Silly Child (傻孩子).
Malaysian pop singer Gary Tsao (曹格) was reportedly "caught" in a gay bar. Again. Tsao seems to like hanging out at gay bars - mainly, it's rumored, because the gay community loves his sappy songs. But Pop Stop speculates that Tsao is frequenting gay bars to overcome his sorrow that the moderately talented Aska Yang (楊宗緯) does a better job of crooning his songs.
PHOTO: LIBERTY TIMES
Finally, expect Ada Pan (潘慧如) to call a press conference in the next few days to bolster her reputation as a good girl. The recent issue of Next published an expose of the variety show hostess, going into details about her work as a hostess. Next added Pan to a list of starlets and models who allegedly hostess, including Little Dragon Girl (小龍女), who published a steamy nude picture book, and Taiwanese/Japanese porn star Hinano Miduki (觀月雛乃), who managed to win back her wayward boyfriend with a Chinese medicine potion that she said tightens the va-jay-jay. The list, incidentally, also includes Suzanne Hsiao - who lost her contract to Pan after her first drugs bust.
The canonical shot of an East Asian city is a night skyline studded with towering apartment and office buildings, bright with neon and plastic signage, a landscape of energy and modernity. Another classic image is the same city seen from above, in which identical apartment towers march across the city, spilling out over nearby geography, like stylized soldiers colonizing new territory in a board game. Densely populated dynamic conurbations of money, technological innovation and convenience, it is hard to see the cities of East Asia as what they truly are: necropolises. Why is this? The East Asian development model, with
June 16 to June 22 The following flyer appeared on the streets of Hsinchu on June 12, 1895: “Taipei has already fallen to the Japanese barbarians, who have brought great misery to our land and people. We heard that the Japanese occupiers will tax our gardens, our houses, our bodies, and even our chickens, dogs, cows and pigs. They wear their hair wild, carve their teeth, tattoo their foreheads, wear strange clothes and speak a strange language. How can we be ruled by such people?” Posted by civilian militia leader Wu Tang-hsing (吳湯興), it was a call to arms to retake
This is a deeply unsettling period in Taiwan. Uncertainties are everywhere while everyone waits for a small army of other shoes to drop on nearly every front. During challenging times, interesting political changes can happen, yet all three major political parties are beset with scandals, strife and self-inflicted wounds. As the ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is held accountable for not only the challenges to the party, but also the nation. Taiwan is geopolitically and economically under threat. Domestically, the administration is under siege by the opposition-controlled legislature and growing discontent with what opponents characterize as arrogant, autocratic
Desperate dads meet in car parks to exchange packets; exhausted parents slip it into their kids’ drinks; families wait months for prescriptions buy it “off label.” But is it worth the risk? “The first time I gave him a gummy, I thought, ‘Oh my God, have I killed him?’ He just passed out in front of the TV. That never happens.” Jen remembers giving her son, David, six, melatonin to help him sleep. She got them from a friend, a pediatrician who gave them to her own child. “It was sort of hilarious. She had half a tub of gummies,
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