Taiwanese pop icon Liu Wen Zheng (劉文正), who captivated the Mandarin-speaking world in the 1970s and 1980s, died in the US of a heart attack in November last year, his agent Hsia Yu-shun (夏玉順) confirmed to local Chinese-language media yesterday.
“A star has fallen and its legend will live on forever,” Hsia was quoted as saying.
Some local reports said that Liu died on the eve of his birthday, making him 69 at the time of his death.
Photo: CNA
Liu, who was born in Taipei on Nov. 12, 1952, rose to fame in 1975 with the release of his first album The Promise (諾言) and a starring role in the romantic film The Story of Four Girls (門裡門外), released nationally and in Hong Kong.
That same year, Liu took over the variety show Jin Xiu Nian Hua (錦繡年華) on Taiwan Television, launching a career as a leading entertainer in the age of state-run cable channels.
After that, Liu became the host of Liu Wen Zheng Shi Jian (劉文正時間), named after and tailored for him on China Television, which at its height reached a rating share of 82 percent, the highest for a Taiwanese show at that time.
Photo: CAN
In 1981, he performed and produced Fei Ying (飛鷹), which was the first Chinese-language music video and a commercial success.
Throughout his career, Liu acted in more than 20 romance films, and won Golden Bell awards for best leading actor in a singing role in 1980, 1982 and 1983. He also received awards for best Mandarin performance in Singapore and Malaysia.
Liu ended his contract with Hong Kong’s PolyGram Records and moved to the US in 1984, marking his retirement from singing.
He returned to Taiwan two years later and established Fei Ying Records, which represented some of the biggest talents in the nation’s music industry including Fang Wen-lin (方文琳), Annie Yi (伊能靜) and Donna Chiu (裘海正).
In 1991, Liu closed the label and returned to the US, refusing interviews, public appearances and a rumored movie deal worth close to NT$100 million (US$3.3 million).
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching