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.
In Taiwan’s politics the party chair is an extremely influential position. Typically this person is the presumed presidential candidate or serving president. In the last presidential election, two of the three candidates were also leaders of their party. Only one party chair race had been planned for this year, but with the Jan. 1 resignation by the currently indicted Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) two parties are now in play. If a challenger to acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) appears we will examine that race in more depth. Currently their election is set for Feb. 15. EXTREMELY
Last week saw the appearance of another odious screed full of lies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian (肖千), in the Financial Review, a major Australian paper. Xiao’s piece was presented without challenge or caveat. His “Seven truths on why Taiwan always will be China’s” presented a “greatest hits” of the litany of PRC falsehoods. This includes: Taiwan’s indigenous peoples were descended from the people of China 30,000 years ago; a “Chinese” imperial government administrated Taiwan in the 14th century; Koxinga, also known as Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), “recovered” Taiwan for China; the Qing owned
Jan. 20 to Jan. 26 Taipei was in a jubilant, patriotic mood on the morning of Jan. 25, 1954. Flags hung outside shops and residences, people chanted anti-communist slogans and rousing music blared from loudspeakers. The occasion was the arrival of about 14,000 Chinese prisoners from the Korean War, who had elected to head to Taiwan instead of being repatriated to China. The majority landed in Keelung over three days and were paraded through the capital to great fanfare. Air Force planes dropped colorful flyers, one of which read, “You’re back, you’re finally back. You finally overcame the evil communist bandits and
They increasingly own everything from access to space to how we get news on Earth and now outgoing President Joe Biden warns America’s new breed of Donald Trump-allied oligarchs could gobble up US democracy itself. Biden used his farewell speech to the nation to deliver a shockingly dark message: that a nation which has always revered its entrepreneurs may now be at their mercy. “An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms,” Biden said. He named no names, but his targets were clear: men like Elon Musk
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