Taipei rang in the New Year with a NT$30 million fireworks display, a goofy catchphrase (Taiwan up!) and a gaggle of celebs and hangers-on singing and dancing their way through the night. But the gossip media couldn’t refrain from pointing out certain fake aspects of the celebration: most glaringly, its lip-synching “talent.” ETTV, Apple Daily, China Times and the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper, The Liberty Times, all had the lowdown.
First up, Wu Chun (吳尊) of popular boy band Fahrenheit (飛輪海). During a performance of the band’s hit song Superb (出神入化), the starched collar of Wu’s glittery-gold jacket malfunctioned and knocked his headset away from his mouth. Oddly enough, his “singing” voice could still be heard.
“I wasn’t the only one singing,” Wu said later when asked for an explanation — as if to suggest that the media mistook his voice for that of one of his bandmates.
A quick look on YouTube, however, reveals no difference between Wu’s voice with or without the headset.
Further south in Taichung, Netizens said that they heard Cyndi Wang’s (王心凌) voice, even though the microphone was nowhere near her mouth. Wang’s agent was quick to come to her rescue.
“During several lines of the chorus she was only supposed to dance,” he said. “Not sing.”
Another search on YouTube shows that, unlike Wu, Wang seems to be singing live. However, her vocals are sung over a backing soundtrack.
Incidentally, readers who check out YouTube may want to compare New Order’s Blue Monday with Wang’s Happy Loving, the song she performed in Taichung. The beginning of her tune is such an obvious a rip-off of New Order’s 1983 classic that one has to wonder what all the lip-synching hullaballoo is about.
Perhaps Wang is just following in the footsteps of her father, Wang Chi-hui (王吉輝), who is currently under investigation for fraud.
According to a report in the United Daily News, the elder Wang invited a jeweler by the name of Lin Chi-hui (林奇慧) to join an organization called the Research Institute for Cross-Straight Peace and Law (海峽兩岸和平法學術研究院). However, it appears that this “institute” is a front for selling Buddhist trinkets.
Prosecutors have since charged the “chairman,” Hung Kun-yang (洪昆陽), with fraud and are now wondering why Wang the elder introduced Lin in the first place.
Returning to fraudulent singing, Alex To (杜德偉) didn’t even try to hide the fact that he was lip-synching during his performance in front of hundreds of thousands of fans in Taoyuan. Or, rather, his agent didn’t.
“The dance routine is difficult to perform live,” he said. “We felt lip-synching to be acceptable because [To] is the original singer.”
Pop Stop wonders if To can chew bubble gum and walk at the same time.
There were other, lesser known, “bands” that engaged is this foul practice, but Pop Stop asks, what’s the big deal? Lip-synching is as common in Taiwan’s celebrity firmament as fake body parts. And nobody gets uptight about a nip here and a tuck there anymore — not unless, that is, some surgeon provides illegal implants.
Meanwhile Rainie Yang (楊丞琳) didn’t find love on New Year’s Eve, as she had hoped. The singer said she was anticipating a text message from a love interest. It never came. She did, however, receive a marriage proposal from a female fan, according to a report in the Liberty Times.
But she’s keeping a stiff upper lip. In a headline that partially read, “Lovelorn Rainie gets wet with her fans,” (楊丞琳濕身催情), the rag said that an autograph session earlier this week saw Yang happily squirting the crowd with a water gun and getting drenched by a water truck.
Perhaps all that wetness will spur on the person of interest to give her a call. Yang has apparently extended the deadline to Valentine’s Day.
Finally, Pop Stop ends this week with some sad news. The 53-year-old mother of pop singer Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒) passed away on New Year’s Day after a long battle with cervical cancer. May she rest in peace. For once it was nice to see the celebrity firmament supporting one of their peers, rather than the usual backstabbing.
Of course it didn’t take long for the media to cynically point out that the 30-year stands to inherit part of her mother’s estimated NT$1 billion estate.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
RSS