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.
If you are a Western and especially a white foreign resident of Taiwan, you’ve undoubtedly had the experience of Taiwanese assuming you to be an English teacher. There are cultural and economic reasons for this, but one of the greatest determinants is the narrow range of work permit categories that exist for Taiwan’s foreign residents, which has in turn created an unofficial caste system for foreigners. Until recently, laowai (老外) — the Mandarin term for “foreigners,” which also implies citizenship in a rich, Western country and distinguishable from brown-skinned, southeast Asian migrant laborers, or wailao (外勞) — could only ever
Sept. 23 to Sept. 29 The construction of the Babao Irrigation Canal (八堡圳) was not going well. Large-scale irrigation structures were almost unheard of in Taiwan in 1709, but Shih Shih-pang (施世榜) was determined to divert water from the Jhuoshuei River (濁水溪) to the Changhua plain, where he owned land, to promote wet rice cultivation. According to legend, a mysterious old man only known as Mr. Lin (林先生) appeared and taught Shih how to use woven conical baskets filled with rocks called shigou (石笱) to control water diversion, as well as other techniques such as surveying terrain by observing shadows during
In recent weeks news outlets have been reporting on rising rents. Last year they hit a 27 year high. It seems only a matter of time before they become a serious political issue. Fortunately, there is a whole political party that is laser focused on this issue, the Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP). They could have had a seat or two in the legislature, or at least, be large enough to attract media attention to the rent issue from time to time. Unfortunately, in the last election, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) acted as a vote sink for
This is a film about two “fools,” according to the official synopsis. But admirable ones. In his late thirties, A-jen quits his high-paying tech job and buys a plot of land in the countryside, hoping to use municipal trash to revitalize the soil that has been contaminated by decades of pesticide and chemical fertilizer use. Brother An-ho, in his 60s, on the other hand, began using organic methods to revive the dead soil on his land 30 years ago despite the ridicule of his peers, methodically picking each pest off his produce by hand without killing them out of respect