Faye Wong’s (王菲) domestic life may be about to get a little bit less domestic. The Chinese-language press is going ga-ga with rumors that the Hong Kong pop superstar is unloading her husband Li Yapeng (李亞鵬) and may have already signed divorce papers. When pressed by journalists, Wong’s buddy Na Xin (那辛) refused to confirm or deny
the rumors and reportedly acted shiftily.
The couple have been plagued with rumors of marital strife since almost as soon as they got hitched three years ago. This time the scuttlebutt focuses on Wong’s recent miscarriage, which some say has made the 39-year-old reluctant to try for another baby. Li was also recently photographed holding hands with actress Miao Pu (苗圃), who angrily denied rumors of an affair. Meanwhile, Wong has recently been spotted window-shopping all by her lonesome self.
Wong may take some cold comfort in the fact that the troubled state of Annie Yi (伊能靜) and Harlem Yu’s (庾澄慶) marriage continues to dominate the gossip pages. The Liberty Times, the Taipei Times’ sister paper, reported that Yu brought the couple’s six-year-old son Harry (哈利) to Beijing in June in an effort to tug at his wayward wife’s heartstrings and lure her back to Taiwan. According to an unnamed friend of Yu, the singer is a Leo and therefore obsessed with saving face. He was all too ready to believe Yi when she brushed off rumors of an affair with actor Laurence Huang (黃維德), who she’d been photographed walking hand-in-hand with, by exclaiming “he’s gay!” (What is with all these celebrities and their public displays of extramarital hand-holding?)
Maybe it’s not fair to call Yu naive — after all, another man his wife had been spotted with, former talent agency owner Liu Tao (劉韜), did in fact turn out to be gay. Yu’s confidence in his wife’s fidelity began to waver, however, after a continuing blaze of news reports stated that Huang was not only straight, but also most likely fooling around with her. The Liberty Times reports that Yu had asked Pace Wu (吳佩慈) if the rumors were true after the model allegedly bumped into Yi and Huang during one of their not-so-clandestine trysts, but the model refused to answer.
The couple may have reached a temporary truce, however, reports the United Daily News. Yi has agreed to stay out of Taiwan and remain mum on the matter until the end of the year, not only to give her husband time to think things through, but also to let the media furor die down so that little Harry and Yu’s mom, who has been taking care of the boy, can go about their daily routine unassaulted by paparazzi.
Yu and Yi’s problems pale in comparison to those of the family of Ivy Li (黎礎寧), who came third in the third season of One Million Star (超級星光大道). The singer, who had only just turned 23 last month, killed herself on Nov. 12. The Liberty Times reports that Li had called her sister in Nantou to tell her she was feeling suicidal, but the cellphone connection had dropped and Li did not answer her sister’s frantic phone calls afterwards. Her friends and family rushed to Taichung but found that Li had already passed out inside her car from carbon monoxide poisoning. She was rushed to a nearby hospital, where doctors were unable to revive her.
Gossip pages speculated that Li’s despondency over the state of her relationship with Sinon Bulls starting pitcher Osvaldo Martinez (勇壯) had launched her into a state of depression. A friend of Li’s defended the Dominican-born baseball player, however, saying that Li and Martinez had been broken up for a while and that the relationship probably had nothing to do with Li’s suicide.
— COMPILED BY CATHERINE SHU
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