Local media have dubbed four-piece boy band Fahrenheit (飛輪海) the new F4 after it proved adept at raking in foreign currency from neighboring Asian countries. Reporters calculated that the group’s newly launched Web site (www.fahrenciti.com) successfully netted roughly 3,000 paid memberships in its first five days. Around 500 fans flew in from Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore to meet their idols in person at the site’s launch party held at Nangang Sports Center (南港運動中心) last weekend.
Fahrenheit’s band members, who are also known by their temperatures (“cold, cool, warm and hot”), did their part and turned in emotional performances to ensure the get-together was worth the flight. Reportedly moved by the band’s success, Wu Chun (吳尊, 59°F), the sappy one, took the initiative and turned the celebration into a tearjerker by sobbing uncontrollably. Wu’s fellow crooners followed suit, finally reaching a climax that involved a group hug and four blubbering pretty boys.
Having had a taste of sudden media attention following her arrest for smoking marijuana, starlet Pei Lin (裴琳) has found a new way of commanding column inches after being discharged from the jug. The vernacular press is salivating over Pei’s alleged lesbian relationship with makeup artist’s assistant Lo Ya–wen (羅雅文), who was caught smoking pot with the star during a police raid last year.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Next probed Pei’s queerness by investigating how she spent her time in jail, and uncovered salacious details of the young star slurping up freshly squeezed orange juice and chomping on sticky rice desserts handmade by admirers. Pop Stop is outraged.
Pei denied all the above but said she would have batted for her own team if she had stayed at the women’s prison any longer.
Former beauty pageant winner Yuni Li (李妍瑾) returned to the media’s attention not for her famed “chocolate nipples,” but her budding amour with a guitar player known as Hantan Yeh (寒單爺). Li broke up with Shin (信), of Shin Band (信樂團) last year.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Members of the press pack wondered whether Li has a predilection for broke rockers. The Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) unleashed its intrepid showbiz reporters on the story, who revealed that the guitarist comes from a well-heeled family and that playing in an underground band is just one of his pastimes.
Li brushed off reports that the rocker spent more than NT$10 million winning her heart and insisted that the strummer is just a typical angry musician who runs amok at bars.
Much to the delight of the Hong Kong paparazzi tailing pop idol Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒), who is shooting the sequel of Storm Riders (風雲) in Bangkok, Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) made a surprise visit to the set last week, along with the couple’s baby boy and a troupe of assistants.
After the Edison Chen (陳冠希) sex-photo scandal, the disgraced actress and wife has allegedly resolved on following extreme methods to save her marriage with Tse. From reportedly begging for forgiveness, making suicide threats to attempting to get pregnant again, Cheung is said to be sticking close to her husband and deploying every trick in the book.
According to Liberty Times and Next, Tse was indeed surprised by Cheung’s unannounced visit, though not necessarily in a pleasant way. Photos from the scene show a sullen Tse sitting next to Cheung and their baby in a car.
If you are a Western and especially a white foreign resident of Taiwan, you’ve undoubtedly had the experience of Taiwanese assuming you to be an English teacher. There are cultural and economic reasons for this, but one of the greatest determinants is the narrow range of work permit categories that exist for Taiwan’s foreign residents, which has in turn created an unofficial caste system for foreigners. Until recently, laowai (老外) — the Mandarin term for “foreigners,” which also implies citizenship in a rich, Western country and distinguishable from brown-skinned, southeast Asian migrant laborers, or wailao (外勞) — could only ever
Sept. 23 to Sept. 29 The construction of the Babao Irrigation Canal (八堡圳) was not going well. Large-scale irrigation structures were almost unheard of in Taiwan in 1709, but Shih Shih-pang (施世榜) was determined to divert water from the Jhuoshuei River (濁水溪) to the Changhua plain, where he owned land, to promote wet rice cultivation. According to legend, a mysterious old man only known as Mr. Lin (林先生) appeared and taught Shih how to use woven conical baskets filled with rocks called shigou (石笱) to control water diversion, as well as other techniques such as surveying terrain by observing shadows during
In recent weeks news outlets have been reporting on rising rents. Last year they hit a 27 year high. It seems only a matter of time before they become a serious political issue. Fortunately, there is a whole political party that is laser focused on this issue, the Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP). They could have had a seat or two in the legislature, or at least, be large enough to attract media attention to the rent issue from time to time. Unfortunately, in the last election, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) acted as a vote sink for
This is a film about two “fools,” according to the official synopsis. But admirable ones. In his late thirties, A-jen quits his high-paying tech job and buys a plot of land in the countryside, hoping to use municipal trash to revitalize the soil that has been contaminated by decades of pesticide and chemical fertilizer use. Brother An-ho, in his 60s, on the other hand, began using organic methods to revive the dead soil on his land 30 years ago despite the ridicule of his peers, methodically picking each pest off his produce by hand without killing them out of respect