Fallout from the Edison Chen (陳冠希) online sex-photo scandal rages on in the tribulation of Cecilia Cheung’s (張柏芝) troubled marriage to Nicolas Tse (謝霆鋒).
A touching little performance at Bangkok International Airport in April in which the couple seemed to have made up their differences seems to have been just that, with Next magazine (壹週刊) gleefully reporting that Tse was conspicuously absent from his wife’s birthday party on May 24.
This could simply be because he is busy helping in quake relief efforts in Sichuan Province, China, but the fact that Cheung, 28, seems to be spending most of her time at her mom’s and sister’s homes suggests that this is more than just a momentary separation for the celebrity couple.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Cheung, who used to be often seen sporting expensive designer labels, is dressing down these days. Next reports that she has earned virtually no income since the scandal broke.
Other girls are better at making use of their assets than others, and TV personality Wu Wen-hsian (吳玟萱), 36, has parlayed her 36D breasts into a lucrative endorsement package for Cutie Bra, despite being over 30, a divorcee and a single mother. But all was not left to nature, and Wu is reported to have overcome the effects of gravity with a little surgery two months ago, which has put her peaks back firmly where they belong — in front of the camera.
Reality talent shows continue to churn out more fodder for gossip hounds. Last week’s celebrity was Chang Yun-ching (張芸京), the androgynous singer and favorite of SetTV’s talent show Super Idol (超級偶像), the main rival to CTV’s One Million Star (超級星光大道). Chang’s handsome looks have won her a huge female fan base, and this led to problems with her “best-friend” and bandmate Chang Wei-lun (張維倫). The lesbian frisson gives the story just that much more appeal, and Next reports that Chang Yun-ching dropped all her commitments in Taipei to get her friend back after she returned to Hualien, supposedly jealous at Chang’s success. Next magazine reports that as a pledge, Chang will sing one of her friend’s own composition for the final of Super Idol tomorrow. It is the stuff that huge television ratings are made of.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Another love story that has the media rumor mill spinning involves Janet Hsieh (謝怡芬), host of the Fun Taiwan show that airs regularly on Discovery’s Travel and Living channel. Next magazine reports that she has recently become involved with her manager Li Ching-bai (李景白), who is — horror of horrors — 16 years her senior. Certainly Li seemed to be doing more than his job description as an agent in looking after Hsieh’s parents when they visited last month. Next even suggests that in accepting a job to produce Ohaeva for Videoland (緯萊電視網), he is taking a step to helping Hsieh fulfill her acting ambitions.
This strategy seems to be what all the local celebs want these days. Lin Chi-ling (林志玲), Taiwan’s top fashion model, has now made it to the big screen in John Woo’s (吳宇森) Red Cliff. When asked about her acting skills in an interview with Sina.com on Monday, co-star Tony Leung Chiu Wai (梁朝偉) replied that “she was very polite. Although she’s not a professional, she worked very hard.” It’s hard to get more damning than that in the Chinese movie press.
Under pressure, President William Lai (賴清德) has enacted his first cabinet reshuffle. Whether it will be enough to staunch the bleeding remains to be seen. Cabinet members in the Executive Yuan almost always end up as sacrificial lambs, especially those appointed early in a president’s term. When presidents are under pressure, the cabinet is reshuffled. This is not unique to any party or president; this is the custom. This is the case in many democracies, especially parliamentary ones. In Taiwan, constitutionally the president presides over the heads of the five branches of government, each of which is confusingly translated as “president”
Sept. 1 to Sept. 7 In 1899, Kozaburo Hirai became the first documented Japanese to wed a Taiwanese under colonial rule. The soldier was partly motivated by the government’s policy of assimilating the Taiwanese population through intermarriage. While his friends and family disapproved and even mocked him, the marriage endured. By 1930, when his story appeared in Tales of Virtuous Deeds in Taiwan, Hirai had settled in his wife’s rural Changhua hometown, farming the land and integrating into local society. Similarly, Aiko Fujii, who married into the prominent Wufeng Lin Family (霧峰林家) in 1927, quickly learned Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) and
The Venice Film Festival kicked off with the world premiere of Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia Wednesday night on the Lido. The opening ceremony of the festival also saw Francis Ford Coppola presenting filmmaker Werner Herzog with a lifetime achievement prize. The 82nd edition of the glamorous international film festival is playing host to many Hollywood stars, including George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Dwayne Johnson, and famed auteurs, from Guillermo del Toro to Kathryn Bigelow, who all have films debuting over the next 10 days. The conflict in Gaza has also already been an everpresent topic both outside the festival’s walls, where
The low voter turnout for the referendum on Aug. 23 shows that many Taiwanese are apathetic about nuclear energy, but there are long-term energy stakes involved that the public needs to grasp Taiwan faces an energy trilemma: soaring AI-driven demand, pressure to cut carbon and reliance on fragile fuel imports. But the nuclear referendum on Aug. 23 showed how little this registered with voters, many of whom neither see the long game nor grasp the stakes. Volunteer referendum worker Vivian Chen (陳薇安) put it bluntly: “I’ve seen many people asking what they’re voting for when they arrive to vote. They cast their vote without even doing any research.” Imagine Taiwanese voters invited to a poker table. The bet looked simple — yes or no — yet most never showed. More than two-thirds of those
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