In the run up to June 27’s Golden Melody Awards, the announcement this Tuesday of the 10 best Mandarin albums and singles (十大優良專輯與十大優良單曲) by the Association of Music Workers in Taiwan (中華音樂人交流協會), saw May Day (五月天) and The Chairman (董事長樂團) spoiling for a fight, as both won honors and will go head-to-head at the awards. The list is widely seen as a barometer as to who will pick up a gong next weekend.
The year’s best albums, according to the association, are MC Hot Dog’s (熱狗) Wake Up, Totem’s (圖騰) Over There I Sing (我在那邊唱), The Chairman’s True and False (真的假的), Deserts Chang’s (張懸) My Life Will ..., Biung’s (王宏恩) War Dance (戰舞), Penny Tai’s (戴佩妮) I Penny, 13’s (拾參樂團) Are You a King? (你是王嗎), Jay Chou’s (周杰倫) Still Fantasy (依然范特西), Summer Lai’s (雷光夏) The Darkness of Light (黑暗之光), and Hao-en (昊恩) and Jiajia’s (家家) Blue in Love. Singles by Jiang Sheng-min (姜聖民), Summer Lai, A-Mei (張惠妹), Deserts Chang, David Tao (陶吉吉), Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), Europa Huang (黃建為), Penny Tai, Jay Chou and Judy Chiang (江蕙) and Tanya Chua (蔡健雅) were also chosen.
This will be the 20th Golden Melody Awards, and Judy Chiang is set to cement her position as the only artist to have never missed a single edition. After picking up her fourth Best Female Singer award in the Taiwanese Song (最佳台語女歌手) category at the 14th Golden Melody Awards, she withdrew from that category, but has continued to receive nominations in other sections. This year, Chiang is nominated for Best Song (最佳年度歌曲獎), Best Producer of an Album (最佳專輯製作人獎) and Best Taiwanese Album (最佳台語專輯獎).
Huang Yi-ling (黃乙玲), an eight-time nominee for Best Female Performer in the Taiwanese Song category who has hovered under the show business radar for some years, will perform at the award ceremony in honor of its 20th anniversary, an event much anticipated by her fans.
While the music industry is gearing up to see who will win big, funnyman Chu Ko Liang (豬哥亮) is struggling to get back on his feet after amassing huge debts through gambling. According to NOWnews, he will be helped considerably in this endeavor by his chief creditor, Yang Teng-kuei (楊登魁), who has reportedly agreed to reduce the amount owed to him by 80 percent. Chu Ko Liang still needs to cough up NT$240 million. For his part, Yang is taking 20 percent of Chu Ko Liang’s earnings from a highly successful ad for air conditioners in which he starred.
There is also talk that Chu Ko Liang may take over show host duties at FTV (民視) in the highly competitive Saturday 10pm slot, which is currently occupied by Hu Gua (胡瓜), whose dominance looks shaky.
Another artist facing uncertain times is Michelle Pan (潘越雲), whose rocky marriage to Huang Kuang-chuan (黃光全) seems to have reached breaking point, with the former demanding a divorce. She has accused her husband of living off her income, saying that his television fee for an appearance in which he alleged Pan had denied him access to their daughter was his only income from the last decade.
In March, Huang snitched on his wife to police, who caught her in flagrante delicto with another man, took photos of the crime and charged her with adultery and disruption of family life (通姦和妨害家庭). Despite her many misfortunes, Pan was still working hard this week, turning up on CTV’s (中視) Variety Big Brother (綜藝大哥大) with show host Chang Fei (張菲). She sang the popular song The Wild Lily May Also Have Its Spring (野百合也有春天), commenting that like a wild lily, a mature woman like herself may no longer turn heads, but can always survive. Chang, with what might be either construed as bad taste or encouragement, suggested that “Pan was too wonderful to belong to just one man” (像阿潘這麼有味道的女人，不能只屬於一個男人).
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
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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,
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