After entering self-imposed exile more than a decade ago, grassroots comedy legend Chu Ke-liang (豬哥亮) was located by Apple Daily last week in a small village in southern Taiwan. “I’m still on the lam!” the startled vet told reporters.
A stand-up comedian who rose to superstardom in the 1980s, Chu was known and loved for his vulgar sense of humor and over-the-top appearance that featured a “toilet-lid” (馬桶蓋)hairstyle, which became his trademark.
Big money came his way, way too easily. With a reported monthly income of some NT$60 million, the comic gambled heavily, and wound up ruined.
In 1995, unable to pay off his debts to the mafia, Chu disappeared, along with his third wife and their son. Until, that is, the infinitely resourceful paparazzi caught up with the 62-year-old while he was tucking into a bowl of oden (黑輪) at a humble eatery.
The media have been busy trying to piece together Chu’s missing decade.
Some sources claim the fugitive has several bolt-holes in southern Taiwan. Others speculate he would arrive home late at night and leave before daybreak to avoid detection.
As for exactly how much the former gambler owes, figures vary from US$8.7 million to US$14 million, though his daughter, singer Jeannie Hsieh (謝金燕), once said that even if there were 100 of her, they wouldn’t be able pay off the sum.
Several of Chu’s old showbiz chums including Chang Fei (張菲), Kao Ling-feng (高凌風) and Chu Yen-ping (朱延平) urged the funnyman to return to the stage, and asked his creditors to spare the man’s life so he could work to repay his dues.
Entertainer-turned-lawmaker Yu Tian (余天) made a public appeal to Chu to contact him so that they could “work something out …”
Local pundits, meanwhile, are salivating at the prospect of a possible comeback.
If you’re blissfully unaware of who Yao Yao (瑤瑤) is, you’re most likely not a zhainan (宅男), the Taiwanese version of the Japanese otaku, a homebound, nerdy guy whose life is all about anime films, manga or computer games and the real-life girls who endorse these products.
Yao Yao is a baby-faced 18-year-old high-school girl and the alleged owner of a pair of 33E breasts. She was recently featured in a television commercial for an online game, which apparently was plotless and centered on her undulating umlauts while she rode a mechanical horse.
According to the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper), Yao Yao has quickly attained sex-goddess status in Taiwan’s otaku community and has been dubbed a “big-breasted bodacious baby face” (童顏巨乳), an epithet used in Japan for porn stars.
In a sign of her rising popularity, the newly minted diva attracted the attention of a stalker, her first, who lurked a whole day at the entrance of the school she attends. Police later arrested the admirer, 19-year-old Lee Lung-hui (李龍輝), for stealing an online game package from a convenience store after he failed to make contact with his idol.
When asked why he wanted to meet Yao Yao, Lee expressed his wish to become her bodyguard. As for the game package he pilfered, Lee said Yao Yao looked so fragile and vulnerable in the picture on the cover that he just had to take it home.
In Taiwan there are two economies: the shiny high tech export economy epitomized by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and its outsized effect on global supply chains, and the domestic economy, driven by construction and powered by flows of gravel, sand and government contracts. The latter supports the former: we can have an economy without TSMC, but we can’t have one without construction. The labor shortage has heavily impacted public construction in Taiwan. For example, the first phase of the MRT Wanda Line in Taipei, originally slated for next year, has been pushed back to 2027. The government
July 22 to July 28 The Love River’s (愛河) four-decade run as the host of Kaohsiung’s annual dragon boat races came to an abrupt end in 1971 — the once pristine waterway had become too polluted. The 1970 event was infamous for the putrid stench permeating the air, exacerbated by contestants splashing water and sludge onto the shore and even the onlookers. The relocation of the festivities officially marked the “death” of the river, whose condition had rapidly deteriorated during the previous decade. The myriad factories upstream were only partly to blame; as Kaohsiung’s population boomed in the 1960s, all household
Allegations of corruption against three heavyweight politicians from the three major parties are big in the news now. On Wednesday, prosecutors indicted Hsinchu County Commissioner Yang Wen-ke (楊文科) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), a judgment is expected this week in the case involving Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and former deputy premier and Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is being held incommunicado in prison. Unlike the other two cases, Cheng’s case has generated considerable speculation, rumors, suspicions and conspiracy theories from both the pan-blue and pan-green camps.
Stepping inside Waley Art (水谷藝術) in Taipei’s historic Wanhua District (萬華區) one leaves the motorcycle growl and air-conditioner purr of the street and enters a very different sonic realm. Speakers hiss, machines whir and objects chime from all five floors of the shophouse-turned- contemporary art gallery (including the basement). “It’s a bit of a metaphor, the stacking of gallery floors is like the layering of sounds,” observes Australian conceptual artist Samuel Beilby, whose audio installation HZ & Machinic Paragenesis occupies the ground floor of the gallery space. He’s not wrong. Put ‘em in a Box (我們把它都裝在一個盒子裡), which runs until Aug. 18, invites