looks as though television actor Yao Yuan-hao (姚元浩) is not paying off the right people. The Apple Daily reported that Yao, the boyfriend of model Sonia Sui (隋棠), planned to hold a surfing competition for youngsters in Ilan last weekend but was shocked when 30 or so tattooed men dressed in black showed up with surfboards and a heavy dose of attitude.
The report said that on the morning of the competition, Yao received an anonymous phone call telling him to cancel the competition. Or else.
Clearly not one to cave in to threats, Yao simply called on local police to remove the pesky gangsters, who intentionally stood in front of the judges so as to obstruct their view. But the coppers said they couldn’t do anything because it was a public beach. Miffed, Yao had no choice but to cancel the competition.
Perhaps Yao didn’t read a report in last year’s Next Magazine that speculated Sui worked in a hostess bar for a few days to pay off her mother’s debts. Pop Stop wonders if there is a connection.
And speaking of celebs paying off debts, Yuki Hsu (徐懷鈺) went off to perform in China in April to help pay down the mortgage on her family’s home as well as to revive her declining career.
But the 31-year-old singer got more than she bargained for at Very 88 (非常88), a pub in Hangzhou (杭州) with a hostess club atmosphere. Feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the ogling eyes and the wink-wink, nudge-nudge expressions of those present, she quickly finished her set and headed back to Taiwan, according to a report in Next.
Now, ordinarily, this might compel a person to look closer at her contract before signing. But not Hsu. At the beginning of this month she was back in China, and this time it was rumored that she wasn’t even told where she would be performing.
Upon arriving at the “gig,” she was ushered into a private room containing a handful of inebriated businessmen and a few hostesses.
Pop Stop was pondering Hsu’s run of bad luck, both in terms of singing and advances made on her by Chinese men, until we saw her tasteless Bad Girl video on YouTube. It features a skimpily clad Hsu gyrating around a stage with half naked men. It’s not surprising that drunken businessmen in China might expect Hsu to put on a show for them.
“It wasn’t my fault.” These were the words spoken by Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) in reference to the lurid photographs taken of her and Israeli fiancee Aviv “Vivi” Nevo earlier this year at a beach resort in St Barts.
Zhang made the comments while attending the Cannes Film Festival, where she was a judge. “I didn’t do anything harmful,” she said, a fact that seems to be backed up by her continued popularity. Yahoo Kimo released statistics for the most hits per person between January and April and Zhang came out on top.
In other wedding news, plastic surgeon and alleged lothario Li Jin-liang (李進良) is finally tying the knot with Hu Ying-chen (胡盈禎), the daughter of entertainer Hu Gua (胡瓜).
The announcement served as a perfect excuse for Next to exhume some of his old skeletons.
The magazine’s sense of timing is impeccable. Nothing appeals more to short attention spans and puts gossip into a shallower perspective than a few lines (accompanied by a photograph or graphic) detailing the shenanigans of Taiwan’s glitterati.
Readers of Pop Stop will recall Li’s escapades last year when he entertained two friends and three hostesses at a Taipei hotel. Or, before that, when he was accused of sexual harassment by a Japanese porn star. Oddly, neither of these episodes made the cut in this week’s edition of Next. What did was a night out last Christmas with a woman named Mao Mao (毛毛), and the suggestion of infidelity it implied.
According to an interview that Hu gave on a TV talk show on May 14, however, she questioned the veracity of that report because she was present with Li and Mao Mao.
On the same show, she cheekily thanked the gossip rag for running all these stories about them because it’s free advertising for Li’s plastic surgery clinic. It also helps her to keep an eye on her husband, she said.
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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