It'sbeen a particularly quiet week for Pop Stop as the celebs seem to have held off from their usual romantic shenanigans. Some amusement was provided by Rachel Liang’s (梁文音) efforts to establish herself on the TV soap circuit. Liang, who rose to prominence through the One Million Star (超級星光大道) pop idol competition, has seen her recently released album Poems of Love (愛的詩篇) disappear from the charts with considerable rapidity. Now, Next Magazine reports that she has been proving far from adequate as an actress.
Liang, who has been enrolled in the cast of GTV’s (八大) soap Purple Rose (紫玫瑰), was photographed by Next during the reportedly innumerable retakes for one scene in which she is carried through the rain by the scrawny Tender Huang (黃騰浩), who quickly became exhausted. The budding starlet’s inability to learn her lines or understand director Lin He-long’s (林合隆) instructions was dismissed as nothing more than the usual learning curve of any young actress by Purple Rose producer Yu Hao-wen (余澔雯).
While Liang is working hard to carve a niche for herself in the entertainment industry, the “big-breasted bodacious baby face” (童顏巨乳) Kuo Shu-yao (郭書瑤), better known as Yaoyao (瑤瑤), continues on a trajectory to superstardom, with Next reporting that ever since her success in riding a mechanical horse in a much debated commercial for the online game Kill Online, her appearance fee has risen 20 times over.
Yaoyao is already planning a pictorial album, but told Next she would preserve whatever modesty she has left. “I don’t want to be like Shu Qi (舒淇),” she is quoted as saying. “Not everyone can manage to make the transition as successfully as she did.” Shu, whose early career as a glamour model for girlie magazines and actress in soft-core features such as Chin Man-kei’s (錢文錡) Sex and Zen II (玉蒲團二之玉女心經), moved into the exalted circle of big budget cinema.
In news of the amorous, Alan Luo (羅志祥) was this week left red-faced after Hong Kong model “Fanny” released details of their online liaisons. He was so embarrassed he deleted his Facebook account. This revelation was followed by three other Hong Kong lookers, model Annie G, actress Vonnie Lui (雷凱欣) and TV host Coffee Lam (林婉霞), claiming that they too are among Luo’s online “friends.”
There is some suggestion of hanky-panky, but Annie G said that Luo was just one of over 4,000 “friends” on her Facebook page, so the whole discomfiture over these revelations seems to add up to very little.
Coincidentally, or not, Luo’s album Trendy Man (潮男正傳) clings to the bottom of the Top 20 chart nearly five months after its release.
Is the whole storm in a teacup just a stunt to keep Luo’s CD sales up? This would hardly be unusual. But Luo better watch out as earlier this week Apple Daily reported that China’s State Administration of Radio Film and Television (廣電總局) had put a number of artists, including Annie Yi (伊能靜), Cecilia Cheung (張柏芝) and Edison Chen (陳冠希), all of whom have been involved in romantic or sexual revelations, onto a blacklist of celebs who are said to be corrupting public morals.
A subsequent Wenweipo (文匯報) report quotes officials as saying that the blacklist is directed against media organizations rather than a direct attempt to label the
A-listers personae non gratae.
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
During the Japanese colonial era, remote mountain villages were almost exclusively populated by indigenous residents. Deep in the mountains of Chiayi County, however, was a settlement of Hakka families who braved the harsh living conditions and relative isolation to eke out a living processing camphor. As the industry declined, the village’s homes and offices were abandoned one by one, leaving us with a glimpse of a lifestyle that no longer exists. Even today, it takes between four and six hours to walk in to Baisyue Village (白雪村), and the village is so far up in the Chiayi mountains that it’s actually
These days, CJ Chen (陳崇仁) can be found driving a taxi in and around Hualien. As a way to earn a living, it’s not his first choice. He’d rather be taking tourists to the region’s attractions, but after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck the region on April 3, demand for driver-guides collapsed. In the eight months since the quake, the number of overseas tourists visiting Hualien has declined by “at least 90 percent, because most of them come for Taroko Gorge, not for the east coast or the East Longitudinal Valley,” he says. Chen estimates the drop in domestic sightseers after the
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
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