It’s April and romance is in the air. So we turn first to Paris, the city of love.
When Macau-born, Hong Kong-based starlet Isabella Leong (梁洛施) hitched up with Richard Li (李澤楷), the youngest son of Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠), who is said to be the world’s ninth richest person and the wealthiest Asian, the media dubbed it a “capitalist Cinderella dream” come true. When the relationship foundered amidst allegations of an affair and the disapproval of the elder Li, the separation was dubbed the “breakup of the century” — one that is rumored to have netted Leong an estimated NT$470 million and a mansion.
But it looks like the mother of three boys has moved on. In the best tradition of “citizen journalism,” a netizen shot pictures of the 24-year-old singer and actor touring the Louvre Museum arm-in-arm with a hunky mystery man.
Photo: Taipei Times
Leong’s agency, though, is keeping tight-lipped about the possible affair until she returns to Hong Kong.
In other relationship news, gossip hounds confirmed, for themselves at least, that model Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒) and actor Ko Chen-tung (柯震東) are an item when they spotted the couple frolicking in a park last week. This follows rumors earlier this year that the pair were swapping spit at a Taipei nightclub.
Although Hsiao denied that they are a couple, the pictures seem to confirm that something is going on. ETtoday reported that Hsiao’s former flame Sunny Wang (王陽明) expressed “shock” when shown a picture of Hsiao and Ko horsing around.
“There’s a 12-year age difference between them,” Wang exclaimed.
Speaking of rocking the cradle, man-about-town Edison Chen (陳冠希) just can’t seem to dog rumors that he’s involved with 17-year old model Cammi Tse (aka Hsieh Chih-hui, 謝芷蕙). The 31-year-old Chen, having returned to the relative good graces of the Chinese-language media following the infamous 2008 sex photo scandal, as well as a number of other transgressions, broadened his resume of sexual indiscretion last year when he hooked up with Tse, aged 16 at the time.
But when intimate photos of the pair were leaked online in November, Chen immediately put the kibosh on the liaison. The rumored two-minute sex tape that Chen allegedly forced Tse to film has yet to surface, and the starlet continues to deny rumors that the Lothario deflowered her.
Last week, however, Next Magazine caught the young rose entering Chen’s apartment building for a late-night rendezvous. She left after four hours. Predictably, both parties denied that an assignation took place and warned the media not to bother them about it.
That might be sensible advice, if the recent run-in between Jay Chou (周杰倫) and reporters is anything to go by. The Chairman (周董), as he is also known, has never been shy about his disdain for Taiwan’s salacious news industry. Relations reached boiling point earlier this month when Chou scuffed up a photographer after supping in Luodong (羅東), Yilan County, with rumored squeeze Hannah Quinlivan (昆淩) and his entourage. During the tussle, one reporter had the audacity to call Chou by his first name, which sent the singer and actor flying into a rage.
What makes the episode so hilarious, if not ridiculous, is the video that one of Chou’s minions later released that contained references to a dynastic Chinese tradition of chopping off people’s heads if they dared call the emperor by his first name. It didn’t take too long for netizens to start calling Chou Emperor Jay (杰倫皇).
The big question on everyone’s lips, of course, is whether or not Quinlivan is allowed to call “Emperor Jay” by his first name.
“I just call him what everyone else does,” she said at a recent promotional event.
When pushed, she admitted that she calls him Jay. Not necessarily a full admission that they are a couple. But only a concubine could probably get away with calling the emperor by his first name.
With all the media scrutiny, it’s hardly surprising that some celebrities aren’t even bothering with relationships. While S.H.E band mates Selina Jen (任家萱) savors her marriage to Richard Chang (張承中) and Ella Chen (陳嘉樺) is set to marry Malaysian cosmetics executive Alvin Lai (賴斯翔), Hebe Tien (田馥甄) told the media that she’s putting her career before romance.
Perhaps Hsiao is putting love on hold because she has been following the soap opera that has become Hu Ying-chen’s (胡盈禎) life since she got involved with plastic surgeon Lee Chin-liang (李進良).
Lee’s list of alleged extra-marital affairs (hostesses and starlets) and sexual impropriety (a Japanese porn star) are too numerous to detail here. Through thick and thin, however, the daughter of entertainer Hu Gua (胡瓜) has stuck by her man. That was until intrepid Apple Daily reporters filmed him on a night out with the mysterious Alison.
Hu Ying-chen called her husband’s behavior “an outrage.”
Afterwards, she moved into her father’s house, according to the United Daily News, and has said that the pair are now separated.
But the surgeon has other, perhaps more serious, problems. Our sister paper the Liberty Times reported that he has just lost an appeal over allegations that he illegally inserted silicone breast implants into a patient. The Taiwan High Court handed him a six-month jail sentence, which can be commuted to a NT$180,000 fine.
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Perched on Thailand’s border with Myanmar, Arunothai is a dusty crossroads town, a nowheresville that could be the setting of some Southeast Asian spaghetti Western. Its main street is the final, dead-end section of the two-lane highway from Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city 120kms south, and the heart of the kingdom’s mountainous north. At the town boundary, a Chinese-style arch capped with dragons also bears Thai script declaring fealty to Bangkok’s royal family: “Long live the King!” Further on, Chinese lanterns line the main street, and on the hillsides, courtyard homes sit among warrens of narrow, winding alleyways and
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