Faye Wong’s (王菲) recent visit to Taipei caused a stir among fans and the entertainment media, but that was to be expected.
The pop diva performed a run of highly anticipated shows at Taipei Arena (台北小巨蛋) last weekend as part of a comeback tour. Wong dropped out of the limelight in 2004, hinting at a retirement from singing.
The announcement of her return to the stage late last year was greeted in Taiwan with frenzied ticket sales: When tickets for last week’s shows went on sale in October, buyers caused ERA’s online ticketing system to crash within minutes. Once ERA fixed the problem, 90 percent of the tickets for her three shows were sold within two hours.
Photo: Taipei Times
While in Taipei last week, the Beijing-born 41-year-old singer’s every move and utterance was closely scrutinized.
Wong is famous for her cool demeanor in public, and TVBS illustrated her reticence by counting the total number of words she spoke to the audience during the three shows: 26.
And as the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) put it, Wong often found herself getting “stuck” (卡卡) wherever she went. Paparazzi and fans mobbed her as soon as she stepped off the plane last week. They mobbed her again at a post-concert party at the Taipei nightspot Barcode (where she had to plead with the photographers to be careful and not push each other), and saw her off at the airport when she left.
But Wong didn’t seem to mind the attention while waiting for her return flight, at least judging from video posted online by the Apple Daily. When asked by reporters to judge her own performances, she replied, “It’s in the past, I don’t care about giving myself a score. Anyhow I did my best.”
She also addressed a minor drama that occurred during her final concert on Sunday. During one segment, Wong sang a number while sitting on a “flying chair” that was lifted three stories high above the audience. The chair got stuck for a few seconds on the way down, which left Wong visibly startled.
“I was a little nervous, but it was OK,” she said. “I thought that the audience was calmer.”
Overnight sensation singer Lin Yu-chun (林育群), also known as “Little Fatty” (小胖), had better look out, because there’s a new YouTube star in town.
Forty-one-year-old comedienne and singer Lotus Wang (王彩樺) has scored more than two million hits for her video and electro-house hit Bobee (保庇, www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gWu5Y6yY4E), a cover of a song by South Korean girl band T-ara.
The video recently received a nod from CNN as the “best viral video of the week,” and the “Bobee” dance has become a veritable craze, spawning a rash of copycat videos. The Macarena goes taike (台客), if you will.
Bobee, a catchy tune sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) about asking deities for protection and luck, is on Wang’s first album, Bo Peep Bo Peep (有唱有保庇), which reached the number one spot on G-Music’s charts twice since being released last month.
Wang described herself in a recent interview with the Central News Agency as a mere “B-lister” in the entertainment world.
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