A late afternoon thunderstorm interrupted the red-carpet celebrations, but otherwise the 16th Golden Melody Awards took place yesterday without a hitch in Kaohsiung, declaring the year's queens and kings of Chinese-language pop music.
The nominees this year in the popular music categories contained many familiar faces, including Jay Chou (
Following through on their many nominations, Sheng Xiang and Water 3 took one of the evening's first popular music awards, handed to Chung Yung-feng (
Speaking backstage after being handed the award, Chung said, "The fact that I've won this award shows the importance that society now places on the Hakka and other minority groups. This gives me a really great feeling of acceptance." The band later also won the Best Hakka Album Award.
The Golden Melody Awards the Chinese pop music industry's equivalent of the Grammy Awards in the US are held annually to award professionals making music in Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka and any of Taiwan's Aboriginal languages. A 36-judge panel is assembled by the Government Information Office, which sponsors the awards.
This year, awards were given in a total of 33 categories, 22 of them in pop music and 11 in classical, tribal, religious and children's music, as well as a special award to honor someone for lifetime achievement in the musical arts. This year's nominees were drawn from 6,208 entrees.
Before the evening's proceedings, thousands of teenagers had braved the intermittent rain showers, crowding the area in front of the city's monumental cultural center to see their favorite stars enter the venue in one of the event's most anticipated rituals. Wang Lee-hom wowed the crowds in a full white get-up decked out with hip-hop-style shiny jewelry and mirror sunglasses.
Most of the grand entrances, however, were of the glamor variety, with men and women alike dressed in classy formal wear. Stanley Huang (
Two of the ceremony's three hostesses Lin Chih-ling (
The third hostess, popular TV show presenter Momoko Tao (
That move broke the ice for a uniquely smooth and upbeat ceremony, despite the continued downward trend of album sales that plagues Taiwan's music industry.
Sales of popular music are down more than 60 percent since hitting a high mark in 1998, leading to a few appeals during the night for people not to buy pirated goods.
In the evening's most sentimental moment, the late comedian Ni Min-jan (
Judy Chiang (
The three-piece pop-rock band F.I.R won the Best Newcomer Award.
Outspoken singer Lotayu (
Winning the Taiwanese Female Singer Award was Sun Shu-mei (
American new-age musician Matthew Lien took an award in the world music category for his album A Journey of Water, which traces metaphorically through music the flow of water from the mountains of Ilan County to the Pacific Ocean.
The alternative songstress Sandee Chen, who had three nominations and on the red carpet dismissed off-hand the notion that she might be nervous about getting an award, received the Best Producer Award. The Aborignal pop rock group Power Station took top honors in the hotly contested Best Duet Group category, beating out the poular group S.H.E and Stanley Huang with Machi.
This year marked the third time that the Golden Melody Awards were held in the southern city of Kaohsiung.
When 17-year-old Lin Shih (林石) crossed the Taiwan Strait in 1746 with a group of settlers, he could hardly have known the magnitude of wealth and influence his family would later amass on the island, or that one day tourists would be walking through the home of his descendants in central Taiwan. He might also have been surprised to see the family home located in Wufeng District (霧峰) of Taichung, as Lin initially settled further north in what is now Dali District (大里). However, after the Qing executed him for his alleged participation in the Lin Shuang-Wen Rebellion (林爽文事件), his grandsons were
A jumbo operation is moving 20 elephants across the breadth of India to the mammoth private zoo set up by the son of Asia’s richest man, adjoining a sprawling oil refinery. The elephants have been “freed from the exploitative logging industry,” according to the Vantara Animal Rescue Centre, run by Anant Ambani, son of the billionaire head of Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani, a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The sheer scale of the self-declared “world’s biggest wild animal rescue center” has raised eyebrows — including more than 50 bears, 160 tigers, 200 lions, 250 leopards and 900 crocodiles, according to
They were four years old, 15 or only seven months when they were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and Ravensbruck. Some were born there. Somehow they survived, began their lives again and had children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren themselves. Now in the evening of their lives, some 40 survivors of the Nazi camps tell their story as the world marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the death camps. In 15 countries, from Israel to Poland, Russia to Argentina, Canada to South Africa, they spoke of victory over absolute evil. Some spoke publicly for the first
I am kneeling quite awkwardly on a cushion in a yoga studio in London’s Shoreditch on an unseasonably chilly Wednesday and wondering when exactly will be the optimum time to rearrange my legs. I have an ice-cold mango and passion fruit kombucha beside me and an agonising case of pins and needles. The solution to pins and needles, I learned a few years ago, is to directly confront the agony: pull your legs out from underneath you, bend your toes up as high as they can reach, and yes, it will hurt far more initially, but then the pain subsides.
RSS