In Taiwan, the term “quality idol” (優質偶像) (referring to someone who is good-looking, talented, has a good education, and is almost too good to be an entertainer) usually summons up images of Wang Leehom (王力宏). Now, another name is set to join the ranks of the quality idols: William Wei Li-an (韋禮安).
Winner of the first season of the now-defunct music show Happy Sunday (快樂星期天), Wei entered the public eye just before the One Million Star (超級星光大道) reality talent show started churning out its own torrent of minor celebrities. As one of the first of this current batch of TV-created idols, Wei will present a themed evening entitled Climbing the Wall to Become an Idol (爬上這牆當偶像), in which he will pay tribute to the different generations of idols in pop history. Wei will perform songs by Taiwanese idol Jimmy Lin (林志穎) and Usher, in addition to tunes he wrote himself.
With his matinee idol good looks and as a bona fide singer-songwriter, Wei captured the admiration of many fans upon his television debut in 2006. After his Happy Sunday triumph, Wei avoided the conventional route of immediately releasing an album, opting instead to return to his studies at National Taiwan University. He has spent the past two years performing at live house venues, writing songs for the likes of Rene Liu (劉若英) and Angela Chang (張韶涵), and releasing his first EP Waiting Slowly (慢慢等) in March this year.
In a phone interview, Wei explained his decision to put his career on hold: “I was exhausted after the half year in competition. It was both the stress and the attention. I wanted a break.”
Wei said he managed to return to a normal life quite quickly as he did not go out of his way to be recognized. “I think all the packaging for an idol can make them very vulnerable and they can break easily,” he said. “I wanted to build a firm foundation [before embarking on a full career].”
Wei’s period of hibernation will soon end. His compositions on the indie music site tw.streetvoice.com have for the past two years ranked in the top 10. Waiting Slowly, the title track from his EP, debuted at No. 2 on www.kkbox.com.tw without much promotion. Wei is scheduled to release his first full-length album during the Lunar New Year holiday.
Audiences can expect songs that ride high on emotionally poignant lyrics and infectious melodies, the hallmarks of Wei’s music.
“I enjoy pop and lean towards music that is melody driven. My music has broadened from early emotional experience to observation of social events these days.”
July 1 to July 7 Huang Ching-an (黃慶安) couldn’t help but notice Imelita Masongsong during a company party in the Philippines. With paler skin and more East Asian features, she did not look like the other locals. On top of his job duties, Huang had another mission in the country, given by his mother: to track down his cousin, who was deployed to the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II and never returned. Although it had been more than three decades, the family was still hoping to find him. Perhaps Imelita could provide some clues. Huang never found the cousin;
Once again, we are listening to the government talk about bringing in foreign workers to help local manufacturing. Speaking at an investment summit in Washington DC, the Minister of Economic Affairs, J.W. Kuo (郭智輝), said that the nation must attract about 400,000 to 500,000 skilled foreign workers for high end manufacturing by 2040 to offset the falling population. That’s roughly 15 years from now. Using the lower number, Taiwan would have to import over 25,000 foreigners a year for these positions to reach that goal. The government has no idea what this sounds like to outsiders and to foreigners already living here.
Lines on a map once meant little to India’s Tibetan herders of the high Himalayas, expertly guiding their goats through even the harshest winters to pastures on age-old seasonal routes. That stopped in 2020, after troops from nuclear-armed rivals India and China clashed in bitter hand-to-hand combat in the contested high-altitude border lands of Ladakh. Swaths of grazing lands became demilitarized “buffer zones” to keep rival forces apart. For 57-year-old herder Morup Namgyal, like thousands of other semi-nomadic goat and yak herders from the Changpa pastoralist people, it meant traditional lands were closed off. “The Indian army stops us from going there,” Namgyal said,
A tourist plaque outside the Chenghuang Temple (都城隍廟) lists it as one of the “Top 100 Religious Scenes in Taiwan.” It is easy to see why when you step inside the Main Hall to be confronted with what amounts to an imperial stamp of approval — a dragon-framed, golden protection board gifted to the temple by the Guangxu Emperor that reads, “Protected by Guardians.” Some say the plaque was given to the temple after local prayers to the City God (城隍爺) miraculously ended a drought. Another version of events tells of how the emperor’s son was lost at sea and rescued