VIEW THIS PAGE Edison Chen (陳冠希) has been threatened with a letter containing a bullet, a Hong Kong television station reported yesterday.
For anyone who has been hiding under a rock or living in a cave for the past year, the Edison Chen photo scandal broke in January 2008 when nude snapshots of the Chinese-Canadian actor in flagrante delicto with eight female starlets — including Gillian Chung (鍾欣桐), Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) and Bobo Chen (陳文媛) — were stolen off of his laptop and subsequently plastered all over gossip rags and entertainment blogs.
Hong Kong’s Cable TV said an anonymous English-language letter warned Chen not to appear at any promotional events and threatened him with harm if he did. The station said it received the letter on Wednesday.
Hong Kong’s entertainment industry has long been tainted by its connections with organized crime, and last year gangsters were allegedly offering HK$500,000 for one of Chen’s hands.
The TV report yesterday did not say if the letter, which was mailed with a gold-colored bullet, explicitly linked the threat with the sex photo scandal, and did not specify the type of harm Chen could suffer if he ignored it.
The envelope that carried the letter had US postage stamps stuck onto it and the return address was in Pennsylvania, Cable TV said.
Chen and the women featured in his homemade porno stash have only recently started to resurface. The 28-year-old testified two weeks ago against a computer technician accused of stealing the photos from his laptop, and he attended a promotional event at a Singapore hamburger restaurant later that week. Gillian Chung and Cecilia Cheung, who are also 28, have discussed the scandal in television interviews in recent weeks.
In a tearful interview with iCable earlier this month, Cheung raged at Chen for not personally apologizing to her after the photos were leaked, even as he made a somber public mea culpa to his fans. Chen stated last month in a court hearing in Vancouver that he had been determined to protect the women’s privacy, but Cheung said he hadn’t even bothered to call her manager back at the height of the scandal.
Not to be outdone, Chung also gave a tearful interview, which was aired shortly after Cheung’s. The blubbering Chung said she blamed herself for her “stupidity” and lamented the very public loss of her dignity. Chung also revealed that she had contemplated suicide after the photos were leaked. The scandal blew apart the starlet’s squeaky-clean image as one-half of the Cantopop duo Twins.
On Tuesday, Chung appeared at a press conference to promote a jeans brand, her first endorsement deal since Chen’s privates became public. The Canto-pop star wore a purple T-shirt that said “tough” and unveiled a billboard ad that showed her with a serious expression, surrounded by models wearing monster masks.
“This was a very long year. It was very hard to get through. I was lucky to have many people who supported me,” she said.
Also bemoaning the loss of his dignity this week was Taiwanese actor Jonathan Chen (陳俊生), who was photographed fighting with his 19-year-old girlfriend in Taipei. Highlights included Chen screaming, “That is not a real apology! I’m not going to accept that! I want a real apology!” and his girlfriend accidentally smacking him in the nose when she reached out to placate him before collapsing to the ground in tears.
Reports of the brouhaha also delighted in reminding the public that seven years ago Chen was caught at the Core Pacific City Mall (京華城) dressed as a “big-boobed hottie.” At the time, Chen said his gender-bending get-up was a publicity stunt for a film, but the incident led to ceaseless speculation about his sexual orientation. In the last few years, Chen has reinvented himself as a businessman after developing a digital learning system that is supposed to improve users’ memories. His screaming match with his teenage lover, however, is one more incident he probably wants the entire world to forget. When a reporter from the Liberty Times (自由時報) called for comment, Chen said in exasperation, “Let’s stop talking about this, okay?”
Fellow Taiwanese actor Jamie Weng (翁家明) also had an unforgettable but regrettable week after news broke that he’d been caught diddling a flight attendant, which threw his marriage with actress Grace Yu (俞小凡) into a crisis. The matter wasn’t helped when reports surfaced that Weng had also been spotted escorting their daughter’s married kindergarten teacher to a hotel for some alleged hanky-panky.
The actor issued a statement saying that he’d flown to Shanghai, where Yu is shooting a movie, to beg his wife for her forgiveness. In an interview afterwards, Yu said she had faith in her husband’s sincerity, but hadn’t forgiven him yet and planned to separate from Weng for the time being. This
was apparently news to her
husband, who the Liberty Times said heard about Yu’s decision from reporters. VIEW THIS PAGE
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