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.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
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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