Plastic surgeon Li Jin-liang (李進良) tied the knot with Hu Ying-chen (胡盈禎), daughter of television host Hu Gua (胡瓜) — but the nuptials did not go off without a hitch, thanks to Li’s alleged womanizing.
Next Magazine published photos of Li and starlet Mao Mao (毛毛) in the same car and claimed the two had been caught trying to rent a room at a hotel in Taoyuan just a few days before Li’s wedding last Saturday. The photos appear to show him ducking his head while Mao Mao tries to hide behind a cellphone, but not before appearing to grin smugly at the photogs.
The duo were the center of another tabloid feeding frenzy last Christmas when Mao Mao and Li were photographed on a night out, leading to allegations of infidelity. Hu Ying-chen shrugged off the rumors, however, saying that she’d been present with her fiance and Mao Mao on the evening in question.
Li managed to dig himself into an especially deep hole with this latest round of scandal, however — news of his alleged tryst with Mao Mao surfaced on his father-in-law Hu Gua’s 50th birthday. The Liberty Times [the Taipei Times’ sister paper] reports that Hu senior had previously made clear he was not keen on listening to any of Li’s excuses for his behavior, but would support his daughter in whatever decision she made about the relationship. Pop Stop readers will know that the discretion-challenged Li’s past misadventures have included accusations of sexual harassment by a Japanese porn star and reports of a night spent entertaining two friends and three hostesses at a Taipei hotel.
The latest excuses that Hu senior apparently did not listen to were Li and Mao Mao’s his-and-her explanations for why they were in the same car and headed to a hotel: Li said he was attending a conference on breast reconstruction surgery, while she said she was on her way to a party. A hotel employee, however, denied that there had been a party that night.
Regardless, Hu Ying-chen is once again standing by her man. Before their nuptials, the two of them emerged hand-in-hand from Li’s clinic and told assembled press that Li had just been giving a lift to an old friend.
Mao Mao fared less well when she appeared on a talk show a couple of days after the wedding. Sassy host Huang Kuo-lun (黃國倫) impishly asked the actress if it was “stressful” hitching a ride from Li so soon before his wedding, prompting Mao Mao’s agent to scream from the wings, “We’ve been set up! You said we wouldn’t have to talk about that!”
Huang later said he had the right to ask whatever questions he wanted and his interviewees had the right not to answer them. Mao Mao didn’t take the bait, however, and deflected his probing by turning the discussion to her new passion for guitar playing.
Billionaire and Quanta Computer chairman Barry Lam (林百里) seems to be faring better in his love life. Gossip pages reported on Monday that Lam might already have tied the knot with his girlfriend Clara Kuo (郭倩如), though he has yet to announce that he’s divorced his first wife, He Sha (何莎).
Both Kuo, general manager of Taiwan Ravenel Art, an auction house, and Lam refrained from confirming or denying the rumors. NOWnews reported that Lam’s 39-year-old paramour has a taste for the high life. In a 2007 interview, Kuo said she and her colleagues had taken a trip to Italy and France, where they enjoyed each country’s art and stayed in the best hotels and eaten the best food because “when you deal with art, you must have an understanding of what quality is.”
Tabloids report that the two lovebirds married in the US before the Lunar New Year. Lam’s (supposedly ex) wife He Sha is no longer on the payroll of Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), where she had previously worked as a supervisor. Lam was spotted wearing a wedding ring during Quanta’s April 21 annual celebration, though it was unclear whether it marked a new marriage or not. When asked by reporters to comment, Kuo’s coworkers parried back, “It’s their own business!”
My friends and I have been enjoying the last two weeks of revelation after revelation of the financial and legal shenanigans of Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head and recent presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲). Every day brings fresh news — allegations that a building had purchased with party subsidies but listed in Ko’s name, allegations of downloading party subsidy funds into his personal accounts. Ko’s call last December for the regulations for the government’s special budgets to be amended to enforce fiscal discipline, and his September unveiling of his party’s anti-corruption plan, have now taken on a certain delightful irony.
President William Lai’s (賴清德) vision for Taiwan to become an “AI island” has three conditions: constructing advanced data centers, ensuring a stable and green energy supply, and cultivating AI talent. However, the energy issue supply is the greatest challenge. To clarify, let’s reframe the problem in terms of the Olympics. Given Taiwan’s OEM (original equipment manufacturer) roles in the technology sector, Taiwan is not an athlete in the AI Olympics, or even a trainer, but rather a training ground for global AI athletes (AI companies). In other words, Taiwan’s semiconductor ecosystem provides world-class training facilities and equipment that have already attracted
The number of scandals and setbacks hitting the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in such quick and daily succession in the last few weeks is unprecedented, at least in the countries whose politics I am familiar with. The local media is covering this train wreck on an almost hourly basis, which in the latest news saw party chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) detained by prosecutors on Friday and released without bail yesterday. The number of links collected to produce these detailed columns may reach 400 by the time this hits the streets. To get up to speed, two columns have been written: “Donovan’s
Three years after JD Vance made his disparaging remark about “childless cat ladies” to the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the Republican vice-presidential candidate is still seeking to explain, telling NBC on Sunday that he was making a joke, but also a “real, substantive point” about the US becoming “too anti-family.” As Vance keeps digging, let’s survey cat ladies — past and present, childless and not — to see just how miserable they are. MAGDALEINE PINCELOUP DE LA GRANGE To Vance, women who own cats and don’t have children are “miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made”