The official list of nominees for this year’s Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎) was released last week, sending some big-ticket pop stars back to prominence. Last year’s sore loser Jay Chou (周杰倫) leads the pack with eight nominations for his album Jay Chou on the Run (我很忙) and the soundtrack for Secret (不能說的秘密).
Singaporean pop singer Tanya Chua (蔡健雅) comes in second with seven nominations, including one in the Best Mandarin Female Singer category, which sees Taiwan’s pop diva A-mei (張惠妹) competing against Chua, Jasmine Leong (梁靜茹) from Malaysia, Hong Kong’s Karen Mok (莫文蔚) and Stefanie Sun (孫燕姿) of Singapore.
Last year’s Mandarin pop diva title-holder Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), however, falls from grace with a mere two nominations in minor categories for her chart-topping Agent J (特務J).
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Overjoyed that he has been vindicated after last year’s neglect, Tsai’s rival in music and former lover Chou has reportedly taken back his unfavorable opinion of Golden Melody jury members as a bunch of dilettantes, saying that they have quite good taste.
In film-related news, Taiwan’s pride and joy, Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) is one step closer to her dream of becoming an international movie star as she made her debut at the Cannes Film Festival last week. While helping to promote John Woo’s (吳宇森) highly anticipated Red Cliff (赤壁) dressed in a golden cheongsam, she proved a smash hit with photographers; so much so that festival staff had to lead her away from the slavering press pack.
Although Lin helped burnish Taiwan’s reputation with her beauty and sentiment — she was caught shedding a tear of joy or two as she walked down the red carpet — the Government Information Office (新聞局) did Taiwan few favors with its poorly reviewed Taiwan Night party.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
More than 200 Asian stars, international distributors and buyers arrived at a dinner only to find that wine and hors d’oeuvers were all that were on offer for the four-hour mingling session. Many of the guests left still famished, or half drunk from drinking on an empty stomach. This was one instance when President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) famous frugality in public display did the country a disservice.
On the romantic front, pop idol Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒) was spotted by local paparazzi getting her hands all over a Russian stud in front of the exclusive residential complex Xinyi Star (信義之星) in Xinyi district last weekend. The two were then whisked off in a taxi by a friend.
Her agent gave the usual they-are-just-friends speech and stressed that the star would stay chaste; a fortuneteller has told Hsiao that her career would prosper if she quits men until August.
Another mild fling, one may say. But with the release date for her new album just around the corner, the timing for the budding romance seems suspect to the trained eyes of gossip hounds.
Just try to answer this: if it was all so innocent, why would Hsiao put herself in the line of fire at Xinyi Star, just at a time when the paparazzi where known to be staking out the apartment block to catch a glimpse of A-mei, who just returned from Japan, and her young sweetheart Sam Ho (何守正)?
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 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
Last month historian Stephen Wertheim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published an opinion piece in the New York Times with suggestions for an “America First” foreign policy for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Of course China and Taiwan received a mention. “Under presidents Trump and Biden,” Wertheim contends, “the world’s top two powers have descended into open rivalry, with tensions over Taiwan coming to the fore.” After complaining that Washington is militarizing the Taiwan issue, he argues that “In truth, Beijing has long proved willing to tolerate the island’s self-rule so long as Taiwan does not declare independence
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