Hong Kong media was in a tasteless tizzy on Tuesday as it reported that pop icon Faye Wong (王菲) had miscarried what would have been her second child with husband Li Yapeng (李亞鵬). Her manager’s strange denial that Wong had even been pregnant only added to the hullabaloo.
Some newspapers speculated that the 39-year-old Wong’s “advanced age” might have had something to do with the miscarriage, or that it might have actually been an induced abortion after Wong’s doctor noticed that the fetus had an “abnormality.” Wong has reportedly been anxious about her ability to conceive a healthy child after her younger daughter was born with a harelip.
After news broke that Wong had lost her baby, manager Chen Jia-ying (陳家瑛) hurriedly insisted that the star had in fact never been pregnant. In an announcement no doubt designed to save her notoriously private client from further public mortification, Chen proclaimed that Wong’s period had just been a little late and, apparently, things are now back to their normal flow. This is in spite of the fact that just over one month ago, Chen herself had announced the pregnancy by telling a reporter that congratulations were due to Wong and her husband, who also confirmed the rumors.
It’s been one heck of a cruddy week for Wong. Just a few days before news of her miscarriage broke, she was caught by Oriental Sunday leaving actress Carina Lau’s (劉嘉玲) home with puffy eyes and a red face. The gossip rag speculated that Wong’s apparently tear-filled pow-wow with her bestie might have centered around Li’s alleged obsession with hanging out at nightclubs and bars while Wong is stuck at home with her two young daughters. Sometimes Li is so wrapped up in whatever it is that he does at those nightclubs that he won’t even answer his wife’s phone calls, the article says.
Lau may also have something to commiserate about with Wong: the Hong Kong media’s increasingly fervent interest in her fecundity since her July nuptials to Tony Leung (梁朝偉). The Oriental Daily News reported that when Lau and her mom took a trip to Hangzhou to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, they didn’t just pass their time sightseeing and feasting on local delicacies. The women also went to a Buddhist temple and prayed that Leung’s magical seed would plant itself in Lau’s womb forthwith. Despite unceasing speculation over when the Leung-Lau superfetus will finally come into being, Lau has taken a much more pragmatic attitude toward childbearing, telling reporters: “getting pregnant and having a baby is a matter of fate. You can’t force the timing.”
Speaking of fate, Taiwanese singer Victor Wong (品冠) recently let slip to the United Daily News that he narrowly missed being a passenger on the flight that crashed at Madrid’s Barajas airport last month, killing 153 people. Wong said he and a group of his buddies had been tossing around the idea of a sightseeing tour to the Canary Islands, where the plane was headed, before deciding Barcelona had more sights to see.
Victor Wong’s near miss, coupled with the recent death of a good friend in a car accident, plunged him into a period of introspection about his own mortality. “Life is truly unpredictable,” he mused philosophically. “We should all make merry while we can.”
And make merry he did. The newspaper wrapped up its item on Wong by noting that the pop star had gained 5kg of pure fat by indulging a bit too gleefully in Barcelona’s delicious seafood and red wine. In order to regain his formerly lithe figure, Wong now has to embark on a strenuous regime of crash dieting. So much for enjoying life while you can.
On a lighter note, Fish Leong (梁靜茹), the wide-eyed Malaysian singer whose album Today Is Valentine’s Day (今天情人節) is a current chart-topper, is heads over heels in love. Her new squeeze is Mr T — no, no, no, not the mohawked, fool-pitying 1980s wrestling superstar. “Mr T” and “Tony” are nicknames the Taiwanese media has given the media-shy fellow who reportedly wooed Leong with sweet compliments and a bottle of her favorite pink champagne at a dinner in Shanghai last December.
Leong told the press that she’s not quite ready to call the bookish-looking Mr T her boyfriend yet, but that he pampers her and they have a knack for saying the same thing at the same time. Mr T, reportedly a manager at a liquor company, prefers to stay out of the spotlight, keeping a low profile and wearing casual, non-flashy duds when he’s out in public with his lady love, reports the United Daily News.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
RSS