What happens when you say former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) should “eat shit” (吃大便) on national television? If you’re TVBS-N’s Liao Ying-ting (廖盈婷), you become a household name overnight — and get a promotion.
Last Saturday, while the network was airing a report on how pro-independence activists were urging Chen to use campaign funds that had been wired overseas to establish a political party, Liao was overheard chatting with other reporters in the news room. “This is nuts,” she said. “How on earth will Chen ever take out the money? [He should] just go and eat shit.”
TVBS punished Liao by docking her two demerit points on her performance record. However, it was quickly realized that the disgraced newswoman would be perfect as a motor-mouth pundit on political talk shows — a job that pays a lot more than real journalism.
Amid the heavy rains and strong winds brought by Super Typhoon Jangmi last weekend, a miracle occurred. Homegrown film Cape No. 7 (海角七號) beat Hollywood blockbuster The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor at the box office. Cape has broken the NT$200 million mark in box office takings and could end up being the highest-grossing film of the year, an achievement no one over the past three decades would have thought possible for a Taiwanese film. Some observers are even predicting that Cape will reach the NT$300 million mark by the end of the year, making it the highest-grossing Chinese-language film ever screened in Taiwan. As a result, big investors are now said to have become more interested in local productions.
Is Taiwanese cinema set for a renaissance? Pop Stop has seen previous predictions concerning the rebirth of the country’s film industry fall flat. It remains to be seen whether Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖), who directed Cape No. 7, will be equally successful with his next project, Seediq Bale (賽德克巴萊), an ambitious Aboriginal epic that stands a greater chance of becoming a hit with the critics than it does of making a lot of money, since it lacks two key ingredients needed for a local hit: youth drama starring pretty-faced idols, and patriotic appeal, as was best exemplified in last year’s hit Island Etude (練習曲).
Moving on to more frivolous matters, 42-year-old Pauline Lan (藍心湄) has reportedly taken an interest in a younger man — again. The object of her desire this time around is theater actor Na Wei-hsun (那維勳), who was observed spending the night at Lan’s mansion last weekend.
Gossip columnists are keen on the alleged Lan-Na tryst because it combines two of their favorite themes: infidelity, and a young man dating a rich, older woman. (Na is married and Lan, seven years his senior, is reportedly worth more than NT$1 billion.) Pop Stop thinks something is wrong with the prevailing notion that it’s perfectly normal for a male tycoon like Terry Gou (郭台銘) to bed a women young enough to be his granddaughter, while a successful woman like Lan stirs controversy by receiving a visit from a man who’s only a few years younger than herself.
Angela Chang (張韶涵) was recently spotted by Next magazine visiting her local Mercedes-Benz dealer sans makeup, a sure sign, Next says, that the pop star has lost her marbles.
You know the signs: Working hard to further one’s music career for five years running, buying a home and an expensive car, gaining weight during a vacation in Canada, frequenting nightclubs and leaving the house without first applying makeup — yep, it’s obvious that Chang is a just few clowns short of a circus.
Dec. 16 to Dec. 22 Growing up in the 1930s, Huang Lin Yu-feng (黃林玉鳳) often used the “fragrance machine” at Ximen Market (西門市場) so that she could go shopping while smelling nice. The contraption, about the size of a photo booth, sprayed perfume for a coin or two and was one of the trendy bazaar’s cutting-edge features. Known today as the Red House (西門紅樓), the market also boasted the coldest fridges, and offered delivery service late into the night during peak summer hours. The most fashionable goods from Japan, Europe and the US were found here, and it buzzed with activity
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, speaking at the Reagan Defense Forum last week, said the US is confident it can defeat the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Pacific, though its advantage is shrinking. Paparo warned that the PRC might launch a “war of necessity” even if it thinks it could not win, a wise observation. As I write, the PRC is carrying out naval and air exercises off its coast that are aimed at Taiwan and other nations threatened by PRC expansionism. A local defense official said that China’s military activity on Monday formed two “walls” east
The latest military exercises conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) last week did not follow the standard Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formula. The US and Taiwan also had different explanations for the war games. Previously the CCP would plan out their large-scale military exercises and wait for an opportunity to dupe the gullible into pinning the blame on someone else for “provoking” Beijing, the most famous being former house speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. Those military exercises could not possibly have been organized in the short lead time that it was known she was coming.
The world has been getting hotter for decades but a sudden and extraordinary surge in heat has sent the climate deeper into uncharted territory — and scientists are still trying to figure out why. Over the past two years, temperature records have been repeatedly shattered by a streak so persistent and puzzling it has tested the best-available scientific predictions about how the climate functions. Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven long-term global warming, and that natural climate variability can also influence temperatures one year to the next. But they are still debating what might have contributed to this
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