What do Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), Big S (real name Barbie Hsu, 徐熙媛), Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝), Fan Bingbing (范冰冰), Fish Leong (梁靜茹), Raymond Lam (林峰), and Angelababy (aka Yang Ying, 楊穎) all have in common? Nips and tucks, ladies and gentlemen, nips and tucks.
Or so claims Taiwanese celebrity makeup artist Ray Chen, according to NOWnews and the United Daily News. Chen made the “revelation” (as if we didn’t all know anyway) last week on a variety show in Thailand, where he declared that he was tired of hearing celebrities tout their makeup artists as the reason why they look so good.
“We aren’t miracle workers,” Chen said.
Photo: Taipei Times
He said that there was nothing wrong with going under the knife, but celebrities should own up to it if they do. And so, what have they done?
Chinese actress Fan has fixed her double eyelids and chin, Big S has a penchant for Botox, and Malaysian singer Leong has had work done on her eyes, nose and chin, the reports said.
Chen criticized Elva Hsiao’s (蕭亞軒) surgeon — or surgeons — for making her look “more horrifying with every surgery,” while Tsai’s doctor(s) came in for praise because she looks “more and more beautiful” with every cut of the knife.
But Chen reserved his tastiest comments for Hong Kong “sex goddess” (性感女神) Angelababy.
“Baby’s the most astounding,” Chen said of the model and actress. “Wherever it’s possible to have work done, she’s done it,” he said.
Cheung came in for special scrutiny as well.
“Her breasts are too perfect,” Chen said. “Usually, women with large breasts have big arms. Her arms are too skinny. The proportion is wrong. She’s either had breast implants, or she’s done upper arm liposuction,” he said.
As if Cheung doesn’t have enough problems. Her marital woes with Nicolas Tse (謝霆鋒) continue to go from bad to worse to, er, worser. It looks as though the divorce that gossip hounds have been predicting since the “airplane incident” (機上事件), which refers to a chance encounter between ex-lover Edison Chen (陳冠希) and Cheung on a flight in May, will come to pass. At least, that is, if fan predictions are correct.
A recent poll revealed that 64 percent of respondents believe the two will divorce, with 57 percent saying they supported Cheung, according to NOWnews.
Chinese Television System (中華電視公司), meanwhile, reported that the Hong Kong glitterati are throwing their support behind Tse, while Taiwan’s celebrities are backing Cheung. Well, not all of them.
Singer, producer, director and actor Jay Chou (周杰倫) defended Tse when asked for a comment. “He’s got a high EQ … If it was me, I wouldn’t be able to stand all the media scrutiny,” Chou said, referring to the scrum of paparazzi who have kept an endless vigil outside Tse’s door over the past month.
And it would seem that Tse still has feelings for Cheung. At a press conference in Beijing earlier this week, a haggard-looking Tse admitted that though there are problems with his marriage, he is standing by Cheung, if only for his two boys.
“It makes me sad when my wife is accused of being bad because it reflects negatively on my children,” he said. “I still love and miss her. But at this point I really don’t know how to carry on.”
Sina.com reported a rumor that Tse served Cheung with divorce papers before she left for a trip to Europe. She returned to Hong Kong on Tuesday, but refused to comment. Stay tuned for updates on the ongoing saga.
And finally, Pop Stop ends this week on a positive note: Web site xinmsn.com reported that Selina Jen (任家萱) of popular band S.H.E will marry sweetheart Richard Chang (張承中) on her Oct. 31 birthday, according to comments made by her father, Jen Ming-ting (任明廷). We wish her the best of luck.
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
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ!). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a