It’s often said that the entertainment industry is built on foundations of fantasy and hype, but some old-time entertainers understand the importance of putting their money into something that lasts.
In the case of Fei Yu-ching (費玉清), the younger brother of popular entertainer Chang Fei
(張菲), that’s bricks and mortar.
This week, the media was awash with news that the singer and TV host had spent NT$330 million on purchasing a property on Dunhua North Road (敦化北路).
According to the Apple Daily, Fei Yu-ching bought the property outright, paying cash up front for the 600-plus square meter commercial property.
Fei Yu-ching certainly has the money to spend, having grossed, according to the paper, a total of NT$186 million for concerts so far this year.
According to the Apple Daily, the singer, known for his mellifluous voice, low-key lifestyle and financial acumen, is careful with his money.
Another entertainer who is being careful with money is Lin Chi-ling (林志玲), who has decided to fight a tax claim of NT$8.19 million on her earnings from last year. The conflict centers on whether some of her earnings are regarded as income earned through her association with modeling agency Catwalk (凱渥) or personal income.
According to the tax agency, Lin failed to report NT$170 million in personal income between 2003 and 2005, which is the basis of its present claim.
Meanwhile, Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) is promoting a new album, which once again sees her flaunting her many physical assets in the media.
The album, titled Myself, has already generated much hype with rumors of steamy music videos.
The most recently released music video, Love’s Pupil (玩愛之徒), for which Tsai served as artistic director, is rumored to push the boundaries, showing off vast areas of Tsai’s well-toned body.
While Tsai revels in opening up on screen, she has said that she has had enough of unwelcome attention from the media, which has recently taken to shining the spotlight on her family life.
In a statement to the press, Tsai asked the media to stop bothering her family, and got decidedly tetchy when accused of lacking proper respect for family elders. “It’s not up to the media to define what constitutes respect,” she is quoted as saying.
In romance-related news, Sammi Cheng (鄭秀文) has, according to NOWnews.com, become the touch-paper of a breakup between Chinese singer Andy Hui (�?w) and Michelle Yu (余德琳), his girlfriend of three years.
Hui and Cheng enjoyed a high-profile and commercially successful personal and professional relationship in the first half of the last decade.
Cheng said in a statement that her relationship with Hui had changed over the past 10 years “from romance to friendship” (愛情變成了情誼), and that there was no basis for the pair getting back together.
Cheng begged the media to lay off the three principals of this drama, but in a slow news week, her wish fell on deaf ears.
TV personality He Yi-hang
(賀一航) has become a major focus of news after police busted a prostitution and drug ring midweek. Apart from being shown to have been a regular client of the syndicate, He stands accused of having trafficked cocaine and ketamine, which is likely to get him into much more trouble than the titillating reports that he engaged in threesomes with hookers.
Despite the lurid details that have been splashed across the tabloids, He’s fiancee, referred to in the Chinese-language media simply as Judy, is standing by her man, for the moment at least.
Their wedding, scheduled for the end of the year, is still on track. According to a report in the United Daily News, police said that He had been “very unlucky” (很衰), since their investigations had not been targeting him at all. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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.
Over the past year, a peculiar phrase has begun to litter Asian women’s social media accounts: “Oxford study.” An Asian woman vlogging about her dating life — and particularly about dating white men — gets commenters reacting to her updates with the words “Oxford study.” A young Asian student showing off her prom dress with her white boyfriend sees “obligatory Oxford study comment” on her TikTok. “I can already hear the oxford study comments coming,” one Asian woman captions a video of her dancing with her white partner. The phrase “Oxford study” refers to just that: an academic study out of Oxford
In spite of the next local elections being over two years away, there is already considerable intrigue and jockeying for position by politicians and their supporters. The local press runs quite a bit of content, mostly speculative, on who will run in what races and what the outcomes might be. This is an overview for English language readers to get a taste of the state of play. Four races in particular are drawing a lot of heat, those of mayors of New Taipei City, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung because in all four the incumbent mayors will be term-limited out. In