Family values were at the fore this week with news about no less than five pop-star couples either having kids, expecting kids or tying the knot.
Taiwanese pop singer Richie Ren (任賢齊) announced this week that his long-time girlfriend Tina is now eight months pregnant and will give birth some time next month. They were mum on speculation that they were "first getting on the bus and buying a ticket later" -- meaning to have a kid and then get married. But The Great Entertainment Daily (大成報) claims to have knowledge that the pair were actually married two years ago, abroad, but simply haven't registered the marriage in Taiwan yet.
With all the hoopla over the rumored marriage between Faye Wong (王菲) and Li Yapeng (李亞鵬) as cover, Li's erstwhile girlfriend, singer/actress Zhou Xun (周迅) has reportedly quietly tied the knot between herself and her boyfriend of several years, the Taiwanese stylist Lee Da-chi (李大齊).
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Chang Fei's (張菲) favorite Belorussian, Margarita, with whom he has been filmed in all kinds of intimate poses and
situations, poured ice on the geri-curled ladies man's hopes by announcing this week that she is already married and has been now for four years. The husband is Taiwanese and the two no longer live together. Nevertheless, ever the gentleman, Chang said he would no longer put the moves on Margarita because he doesn't chase married women. "We're through," he's quoted as saying in the Apple Daily (
Hong Kong pop sensation Jackie Cheung (張學友) dropped a bomb this week by revealing to media that his wife had a baby daughter on March 8. Amazingly, Hong Kong's notoriously snooping media -- they've lately been camping outside his younger daughter's school hoping for pictures of her -- were shut out from any word of the birth until this week.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
And actress Lee Chien-rong (李篟蓉) took the rumor out of the talk of her second pregnancy by confirming that she's indeed expecting, but declined to say when the next member of the family would be making an appearance.
Today is the long-anticipated release of The Wayward Cloud (天邊一朵雲), Tsai Ming-liang's (蔡明亮) latest film. Pop Stop has heard through the grapevine that the movie is yet another self-indulgent piece of art-house masturbation, but that this time there's plenty of sex, which might explain why it will show on 40 screens all around Taiwan and has received more column inches of coverage than probably all his previous movies combined. This is in contrast to last year's Golden Horse winner Kekexili (可可西里), a truly masterful Chinese film, beautifully shot and with more powerful messages that was shown on a paltry two screens in Taipei (see reviews on page 17).
Forbes magazine released its annual list of richest and most famous people in China this week, with NBA star Yao Ming (姚明) at the top, followed by Zhang Ziyi (章子怡), then the Olympic hurdles cannonball Liu Xiang (劉翔), then Vicki Zhao (趙薇) and Faye Wong in fifth place.
PHOTO: AP
After an almost three-year absence, Coco Lee (李玟) is back with a new album, but not in Chinese this time. Back in her native US, the singer is releasing her second English-language album, this time with special editions set to be released in India and South Korea, each with tracks by stars from those countries.
Anyone who has been to Alishan (阿里山) is familiar with the railroad there: one line comes up from Chiayi City past the sacred tree site, while another line goes up to the sunrise viewing platform at Zhushan (祝山). Of course, as a center of logging operations for over 60 years, Alishan did have more rail lines in the past. Are any of these still around? Are they easily accessible? Are they worth visiting? The answer to all three of these questions is emphatically: Yes! One of these lines ran from Alishan all the way up to the base of Jade Mountain. Its
The entire saga involving the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and its Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) continues to produce plot twists at such a rapid pace that fiction publishers would throw it out for being ridiculously improbable. This past week was particularly bizarre, but surprisingly the press has almost entirely ignored a big story that could have serious national security implications and instead focused on a series of salacious bombshell allegations. Ko is currently being held incommunicado by prosecutors while several criminal investigations are ongoing on allegations of bribery and stealing campaign funds. This last week for reasons unknown Ko completely shaved
The only geopolitical certainty is that massive change is coming. Three macro trends are only just starting to accelerate, forming a very disruptive background to an already unsettled future. One is that technological transformations exponentially more consequential and rapid than anything prior are in their infancy, and will play out like several simultaneous industrial revolutions. ROBOT REVOLUTION It is still early days, but impacts are starting to be felt. Just yesterday, this line appeared in an article: “To meet demands at Foxconn, factory planners are building physical AI-powered robotic factories with Omniverse and NVIDIA AI.” In other words, they used AI
Nov. 25 to Dec. 1 The Dutch had a choice: join the indigenous Siraya of Sinkan Village (in today’s Tainan) on a headhunting mission or risk losing them as believers. Missionaries George Candidus and Robert Junius relayed their request to the Dutch governor, emphasizing that if they aided the Sinkan, the news would spread and more local inhabitants would be willing to embrace Christianity. Led by Nicolaes Couckebacker, chief factor of the trading post in Formosa, the party set out in December 1630 south toward the Makatao village of Tampsui (by today’s Gaoping River in Pingtung County), whose warriors had taken the
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