A kiss wasn’t just a kiss for Chinese fans of Alan Luo (羅志祥), aka Little Pig (小豬), who has been in Hangzhou filming the CTS drama series Hi My Sweetheart (海派甜心).
Admirers watching the shoot got into a tizzy during one scene in which co-star Rainie Yang (楊丞琳) forces Luo into a passionate kiss. Some of the 40 fans “wailed” and started to cry as they watched Yang plant her lips upon Luo’s. The reaction startled Yang, who tried to assure the distressed fans by telling them, “We’re just like siblings, please
don’t misunderstand.”
But it took Little Pig to bring about quiet on the set. “Be good,” he said. “Your husband [honey] (老公) is filming right now. You can’t get upset with Rainie over this.”
That soothed his admirers, who obediently fell silent, but not Yang. She was visibly “frightened” and made sure to apologize to the fans before later kissing scenes, according to the Taipei Times’ sister paper, the Liberty Times.
Rumors have resurfaced of a romance between actress and high society belle Terri Kwan (關穎) and pop star heartthrob Jerry Yan (言承旭), as the two were reported to have spent a romantic getaway in Koh Samui last week.
Mobbed by reporters at Taoyuan International Airport last weekend, Yan only smiled when asked if he and Kwan had “secretly met” in Thailand. Yan and Kwan’s managers also dodged similar questions.
Speculation has see-sawed about a Yan-Kwan relationship ever since the two met at the beginning of the year as co-stars of the TV drama series Starlit (心星的淚光). A Liberty Times report speculated that Koh Samui was a “reconciliation” trip after a supposed break-up in June that culminated in a heated quarrel in Yan’s car.
This wouldn’t be Kwan’s first hot-and-cold relationship. She dated male model Jerry Huang (黃志瑋) for more than four years before their romance fizzled in the midst of ongoing reports that her wealthy parents were urging her to find a partner with a more respectable pedigree.
As for Yan, who knows? The Liberty Times noted that he made a recent television appearance where he spoke at length about “a love letter never sent” to another rumored flame, supermodel Lin Chih-ling (林志玲).
It looks like hot-headed crooner Gary Tsao (曹格) has been at it again. Last Friday, the Malaysian Mando-pop star was reportedly banned from the posh Traders Hotel in Kuala Lumpur for smashing a television in a fit of rage during his stay there.
But at least Kuala Lumpur didn’t get it as bad as Hong Kong, where Tsao got blind drunk and beat the daylights out of his friend, Canto-pop singer Justin Lo (側田), during a night out on the town. The bad publicity forced Tsao to cancel a string of upcoming concerts and Hong Kong police are investigating the incident.
As for the smashed TV, Tsao’s manager has denied the story, while an exasperated Tsao remarked that even in Malaysia, “people were out to get me.”
In other news, the Chairman has died — once again, in a rumor.
A tipster pointed the Liberty Times to a Facebook group page with a discussion thread title
that read: “Indonesian media reports that Jay Chou (周杰倫) has died in a foreign country from a drug overdose.”
While it is true that Chou is in a foreign country, says his record label JVR, he’s alive and well in the US filming The Green Hornet, in which he plays the role of Kato.
The hoaxers were only slightly more imaginative this time. The first time Chou supposedly died was in 2004, when a Chinese Web site claimed that the pop star had been run over by a truck.
And it’s official — A-mei (阿妹) is dating. At least according to the Apple Daily, which finally caught the pop diva and her boyfriend of three years, basketball star Sam Ho (何守正) on their first “public” date. One of the paper’s crack photographers managed to sneak his lens into the couple’s private dining room at a Japanese bar and grill in Taipei’s East District.
Ho spotted the camera, and perhaps his basketball skills came in handy, as he promptly used his body to completely block A-mei from the view of the lens. The Apple Daily report noted how sweet and considerate Ho was for “protecting his flower.”
The latest military exercises conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) last week did not follow the standard Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formula. The US and Taiwan also had different explanations for the war games. Previously the CCP would plan out their large-scale military exercises and wait for an opportunity to dupe the gullible into pinning the blame on someone else for “provoking” Beijing, the most famous being former house speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. Those military exercises could not possibly have been organized in the short lead time that it was known she was coming.
From an anonymous office in a New Delhi mall, matrimonial detective Bhavna Paliwal runs the rule over prospective husbands and wives — a booming industry in India, where younger generations are increasingly choosing love matches over arranged marriage. The tradition of partners being carefully selected by the two families remains hugely popular, but in a country where social customs are changing rapidly, more and more couples are making their own matches. So for some families, the first step when young lovers want to get married is not to call a priest or party planner but a sleuth like Paliwal with high-tech spy
When Portugal returned its colony Macao to China in 1999, coffee shop owner Daniel Chao was a first grader living in a different world. Since then his sleepy hometown has transformed into a bustling gaming hub lined with glittering casinos. Its once quiet streets are now jammed with tourist buses. But the growing wealth of the city dubbed the “Las Vegas of the East” has not brought qualities of sustainable development such as economic diversity and high civic participation. “What was once a relaxed, free place in my childhood has become a place that is crowded and highly commercialized,” said Chao. Macao yesterday
The world has been getting hotter for decades but a sudden and extraordinary surge in heat has sent the climate deeper into uncharted territory — and scientists are still trying to figure out why. Over the past two years, temperature records have been repeatedly shattered by a streak so persistent and puzzling it has tested the best-available scientific predictions about how the climate functions. Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven long-term global warming, and that natural climate variability can also influence temperatures one year to the next. But they are still debating what might have contributed to this