Pop Stop readers will know that Van Ness Wu (吳建豪) has recently gotten very cozy with God. The Taiwanese-American heartthrob called on his new best friend for support last week when his production company became embroiled in a drug scandal. Wu hauled a copy of the Bible to a press conference where he and Smash and Grab Productions
(天地仁和電影公司) co-founder Jimmy Hung (洪天祥) both denied any wrongdoing.
The trouble started when a police raid of the film company’s office uncovered a baggie of marijuana in an employee’s belongings. Apple Daily described 29-year-old Chou Ichuan (周毅銓) as Wu’s “clingy assistant,” but Wu’s manager insisted that her client had only known the alleged pothead for one or two weeks. Chou’s three roommates were also arrested on charges related to drug trafficking.
Hung and Wu appeared at a joint press conference after the arrests. Despite being clad in black leather and sporting a tough-looking buzz cut, Wu appeared very pious — and, indeed, demure — as he clutched the Good Book. He dismissed rumors that he’d shaved his head to avoid a drugs test, saying that his new coif was for an independent film he shot last month in the US. Both men distanced themselves from Chou and his alleged herbal remedy. “I told him not to bring that kind of stuff to work and he said he wouldn’t touch it again,” said Hung. “One of our employees made a mistake, it doesn’t mean it has anything to do with the rest of the company.”
Hung went on to kvetch about the police officers who’d searched Smash and Grab, complaining that he’d been ordered to leave the premises. “They acted like we were all drug traffickers,” Hung wailed to reporters, before adding that if urine samples could prove Hung and Wu’s innocence, both men would be more than happy to step up to
the cup.
According to Apple Daily, Chou admitted to possessing marijuana but insisted he didn’t sell it (his roommates also say they are innocent of the drug trafficking charges). While being questioned by police, Chou claimed he’d gotten drunk in the East District’s (東區) Room 18 and bumped into a blonde man outside the nightclub, who offered him the baggie of marijuana. Zhou said that the bag cost him NT$2,000 and that all he wanted to do was go home, have something to eat and drink and then “relax.”
TV producer Chen Yulin (沈玉琳) appeared to be on something at his wedding last week, but the only thing he was high on was life ... or his 25-year-old wife Wu Hsiao-chun (吳曉純), also known as Yaya (芽芽), who is 17 years Chen’s junior. According to reports in the Apple Daily, 700 guests attended the lavish 81-table banquet. Chen entertained the gathering with a failed attempt at hula-hooping, some very moist tongue wrestling with Wu and touching proclamations of love: “[Wu’s] a good daughter, she takes care of me, her bedroom kung-fu skills [床上功夫] are excellent and, most importantly, she’ll never bash me on television!”
The last part was a jab at Chen’s ex-girlfriend, television host Peajen (佩真), who he dated for eight years. The two climbed to the top ranks of show business (or at least the top ranks of the B-list) together before splitting up. Peajean has referred to Chen on her talk show as a heartless two-timer. Nonetheless, she put in an appearance at the banquet with a NT$8,000 hongbao in hand, telling reporters that she and Chen remained good friends.
Before the wedding, Wu’s friends ribbed Chen by forcing him to enter the hotel in a pair of high heels and sing while hula hooping (the toy fell almost instantly, crashing into a coffee table). At the banquet, Chen praised Wu for her skill at preparing instant noodles. The 700 guests, who caused a traffic jam in front of the reception venue, included semi-celebs, such as actors Ma Kuo-hsien (馬國賢), Jonathan Chang (張克帆),Ting Kuo-lin (丁國琳) and Riva Zhang (張芳奕). TV host Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) was Chen’s best man and joked during his speech that the groom’s father was only interested in Ding’s cleavage.
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
Six weeks before I embarked on a research mission in Kyoto, I was sitting alone at a bar counter in Melbourne. Next to me, a woman was bragging loudly to a friend: She, too, was heading to Kyoto, I quickly discerned. Except her trip was in four months. And she’d just pulled an all-nighter booking restaurant reservations. As I snooped on the conversation, I broke out in a sweat, panicking because I’d yet to secure a single table. Then I remembered: Eating well in Japan is absolutely not something to lose sleep over. It’s true that the best-known institutions book up faster
RSS