One secret marriage led to another for Hong Kong heartthrob Andy Lau (劉德華).
After the news broke last Saturday of his under-the-radar Las Vegas wedding to long-rumored sweetheart Carol Choo (朱麗倩) in June, Lau admitted to having signed a nuptial agreement/marriage contract (結婚證書) with Taiwanese actress Yu Ke-hsin (喻可欣) back in the 1980s.
The agreement, however, is not legally binding as the marriage was neither officially registered nor was it celebrated publicly. But that hasn’t stopped Yu’s mother, referred to as “Mama Yu” in the Chinese-language press, from reminiscing about those glory days in public this week. She said Lau and her daughter signed the agreement on New Year’s Eve in 1985, when the pair were head over heels in love. While her daughter still has the document, Mama Yu says it merely serves as a memento of a past romance.
The revelations are just another headache for Lau, who is currently being branded as a “liar” by the Hong Kong media. He faced reporters at Hong Kong airport earlier this week, asking for “forgiveness” and apologizing for concealing his marriage to Chu. Lau vehemently denied having any children, a rumor that has dogged him for years.
Perhaps the media fuss over Lau has scared actor/singer Leon Lee (黎明) and supermodel Gaile Lai (樂基兒) into divulging the details of their own marriage. The Apple Daily in Hong Kong reported that the couple got married last year, also in Las Vegas. The 28-year-old Lai broke the news at a public appearance in Hong Kong, telling the paper: “Yes, we have already gotten married. I admit it. But the people close to us already know.”
Comedian Chu Ko Liang (豬哥亮) enjoyed a running start with his comeback show on Formosa TV (FTV, 民視), Chu Ko Hui She (豬哥會社), which started at the end of July. But the highly anticipated variety program has already begun to lose some of its luster. The Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) reports that some fans are less than thrilled with Chu Ko Liang’s co-host, Rene Hou (侯怡君), who has been criticized on Internet discussion boards as just “another pretty face.” Meanwhile, the Apple Daily quoted AGB Nielsen figures showing that the show’s viewership dropped by nearly 1.4 million over three episodes to an average of 3.08 million viewers.
While Chu Ko Liang is wisely maintaining a poker face about his ratings, Mando-pop star David Tao (陶吉吉) has been twittering his thoughts about Taiwan’s fickle pop charts, which got him in a little hot water. The 39-year-old singer-songwriter’s sixth album, David Tao 69 (六 九樂章), hit No. 1 on Five Music’s charts for the final week of last month, but only No. 3 on G-Music’s.
This seemed a little fishy to Tao, who offered his Twitter followers some market analysis and “speculation”: Five Music’s charts are based on sales in nine stores across the island, while G-Music’s charts are based on sales in 31 stores, which include major chains Rose Records (玫瑰唱片) and Tachung Records (大眾唱片). With more stores, Tao said, G-Music is more susceptible to chart-rigging or “buying the charts” (買榜), where companies inflate sales by purchasing records by their own artists.
“I’m not saying there are people rigging this chart, or that the chart is unfair, but I just think we need to use a little common sense,” he tweeted. “This way we see the whole picture, which is a little suspicious ...”
Fans of A-mei (張惠妹), whose latest album A-mit (阿密特) was No. 1 on G-Music’s charts, were not amused. On an Internet discussion board of A-mei and Tao’s record label, Gold Typhoon (金牌大風), posters accused Tao of being a “sore loser,” reports the Liberty Times.
This prompted a response from Tao, this time through Gold Typhoon: “I didn’t direct my comments at an artist or album in particular,” he said. “I just wanted to discuss one thing — my concern for the health of the [pop music] environment and to let consumers better understand the truth of all parts of the business. Please don’t misunderstand.”
And to conclude, some lighter fare. Singer Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), who seems to change diets as often as her wardrobe, has finally settled on the “right” nutritionist, according to the Apple Daily. After years of cooking without oil, cutting out starch and meat and eating only bland foods, Tsai’s latest regimen is, lo and behold, a regular balanced diet. She now eats almost everything except for eggs, and fruit only before 4pm. Common sense prevails.
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is
Artifacts found at archeological sites in France and Spain along the Bay of Biscay shoreline show that humans have been crafting tools from whale bones since more than 20,000 years ago, illustrating anew the resourcefulness of prehistoric people. The tools, primarily hunting implements such as projectile points, were fashioned from the bones of at least five species of large whales, the researchers said. Bones from sperm whales were the most abundant, followed by fin whales, gray whales, right or bowhead whales — two species indistinguishable with the analytical method used in the study — and blue whales. With seafaring capabilities by humans
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