Pop Stop kicks off the Year of the Rabbit with wedding bells, family feuds and alleged draft avoidance. But first, Selina Jen (任家萱) of popular girl band S.H.E will receive significant financial compensation after suffering severe burns to more than 50 percent of her body while filming the TV adaptation of the 1994 movie I Have a Date With Spring (我和春天有個約會) in Shanghai last year.
HIM International Music (華研國際音樂), Jen’s record company, made the announcement last week. And though the settlement figure wasn’t revealed, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), along with many of Taiwan’s other media, estimated the amount to be NT$100 million.
HIM said the compensation covers hospital bills, future therapy and financial losses suffered as a result of the accident.
Photo: Taipei Times
“We are not exactly satisfied, but it is acceptable,” the company said. Since being released from hospital after 89 days of treatment, at least five companies have approached Jen to endorse their products.
Doctors treating the singer said her injuries shouldn’t affect her voice, while her father Jen Ming-ting (任明廷) said she had not been left infertile.
In wedding news, singer and actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛, aka Big S) and 29-year-old Chinese restaurateur and multimillionaire Wang Xiaofei (汪小菲) have announced they will wed on March 22 ... for the second time.
Hsu and Wang raised eyebrows last year when they held a surreptitious marriage in Beijing, a month after meeting each other. Gossip hounds concluded that it was a shotgun wedding.
According to the Liberty Times, the couple plan to charter a plane to fly guests to their upcoming nuptials on China’s Hainan Island (海南島). The estimated cost is NT$2.5 million.
And from wedded bliss to relationship woes. Actress and model Tiffany Hsu (許瑋甯) has publicly defended her actor and model boyfriend Ethan Ruan (阮經天).
Veteran readers of Pop Stop will recall that Next magazine exposed Ruan’s sexual preferences in a tell-all interview with a mystery woman named “Joanna.” Hsu, who had been dating the Lothario while the sexual escapades were going on, said she would stick with her man.
Since then, the man-about-town seems to have put his house in order. That is, until last month when Ruan’s neighbor complained that he was keeping the building awake with wild mahjong parties at his luxury flat.
The unidentified neighbor complained that Ruan “talked loudly.” “The walls aren’t soundproof [and] my son couldn’t sleep,” he said.
Hsu, acting the peacemaker, said she would ensure that the volume of future parties would be kept to a minimum.
Ruan’s noise issues are small potatoes in comparison to the ongoing soap opera between singer Angela Chang (張韶涵) and her family.
The feud dates back a few years to when Chang fired her mother, who had been serving as her manager, over alleged financial irregularities. Mama Chang then dropped hints that her daughter was on drugs and under the influence of a friend skilled in the art of witchcraft.
The quarrel heated up last month when an acquaintance of Angela Chang got into a scuffle with other members of the Chang clan, who were attempting to visit their estranged son. Not to be left out of the drama, the singer’s uncle, Chiang Li-le (姜禮樂), contacted several media outlets and accused the starlet of masterminding the incident.
Chiang has also gone on the record to say that Chang refuses to give her financially challenged parents any of the NT$150 million her family claims she earned last year.
“May a car hit me if she has given the family even one cent,” Chiang said in a phone-in interview with TVBS. He added that if he had wrongly accused his niece, he would not have any offspring, a statement that may cause his son and a daughter some consternation.
Chang, for her part, broke her self-imposed silence last week. In an interview with the Chinese-language edition of Marie Claire, she said she “will not cry” over the ongoing brouhaha, and repeatedly referred to the family strife as “that thing.”
One celebrity without financial or family problems is Show Luo (羅志祥, also known as Alan Luo). The singer maintains good relations with his mother and earned a cool NT$300 million last year, beating out the “Double J’s” — Jay Chou (周杰倫) and Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) — to sell most albums.
And what will he do with all that cash? Buy a luxury apartment to hide his new gal pal Chiu Ting-yun (邱庭筠), according to the Apple Daily. The rag speculates the two are an item after Luo picked her to star in a music video.
Black, beautiful and 45 years old — that’s Chou’s new love, according to the China Times and United Daily News. The “Black Beauty” (黑美人), as the media has dubbed “her,” is in fact a 1965 Chrysler Imperial Crown, one of 29 vehicles used on the set of The Green Hornet, which Chou starred in.
Chou appeared at a press conference with the sleek automobile last month to promote the movie and professed disappointment that the car wasn’t allowed into Taiwan with its missiles. They could have been used to “blow up the paparazzi (炸狗仔),” he quipped.
Chou has much else to be happy about. The Green Hornet dominated the Taipei box office in its first weekend, pulling in NT$17.3 million, or 41 percent of ticket sales, according to Film Business Asia.
But Chou’s performance in the movie, which involved several difficult stunt scenes, has led some to speculate that he faked a spinal condition to avoid compulsory military service.
In response, Chou’s company, JVR, said the singer/actor had received an official exemption from the military in 1999 and that “the doctor said that with moderate care, patients like him are able to do those kinds of stunts.”
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