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.
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