The whirlwind romance between singer and actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛, aka Big S) and 29-year-old Chinese restaurateur and multimillionaire Wang Xiaofei (汪小菲) has spawned yet another surprise.
The couple, who got engaged last month on their fourth date and announced that the wedding would be next year, officially tied the knot by registering their marriage in Beijing last week.
“I couldn’t wait any longer,” the Apple Daily quoted Wang as saying.
Photo: Taipei times
The news must have come as a surprise to Hsu’s family, which includes her talk show host sister Dee Hsu (徐熙娣, aka Little S).
Their father, Hsu Chien (徐堅), initially denied the report, saying that Big S made no mention of her plans over dinner with the family before the news broke. “If it were true, she would have told me,” he said.
But as the Apple tells it, Big S took a leave of absence from the movie she’s currently shooting in China and returned to Taipei on a one-day trip to fetch documentation showing that she was single for Beijing authorities.
The two confirmed the wedding in a press statement on Wednesday last week, requesting that the media give them space and “pay attention to safety even as you hunt us down.”
With the rush to make things official, there has been speculation that Hsu is already pregnant. She has reportedly been spotted getting out of cars with the help of an assistant and wearing “loose clothing” and flats instead of her favored heels. Wang denied the rumors, telling Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily they got married early because “we just felt it was time.”
With that formality out of the way, the couple are planning at least three wedding parties in March next year, slated to be held in Taipei, Beijing, and Hainan Island.
Meanwhile, Selina Jen (任家萱) continues to recover from a serious accident last month during a television shoot in China in which the S.H.E. singer suffered severe burns.
The 29-year-old’s record company, HIM International Music (華研國際音樂), released an official account of her condition earlier this week. Jen has burns covering 54 percent of her body, with 41 percent of them third-degree burns concentrated on her legs and waist.
Jen has undergone several skin graft surgeries, and had to shave her head to provide skin from her scalp for the transplant.
Both her record company and fiance Richard Chang (張承中) have been providing regular updates on Jen’s recovery, which they say has been “better than expected,” but difficult nonetheless.
“For quite a while she’s been in so much pain that she doesn’t even have the strength to bite her tongue,” the Apple Daily quoted Chang as saying. “I don’t know where she gets the power to carry on.”
According to channelnewsasia.com, compensation talks are in the works between HIM and Hunan Television (湖南衛視), the broadcaster that invited Jen to participate in the ill-fated shoot.
Jen earned more than NT$130 million (US$4.3 million) last year, and considering that her recovery is expected to take at least a year, various media outlets are speculating that Hunan Television will have to make a substantial payout.
The Taipei Times last week reported that the rising share of seniors in the population is reshaping the nation’s housing markets. According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, about 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident. H&B Realty chief researcher Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨), quoted in the article, said that there is rising demand for elderly-friendly housing, including units with elevators, barrier-free layouts and proximity to healthcare services. Hsu and others cited in the article highlighted the changing family residential dynamics, as children no longer live with parents,
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