With the recent marriages of actresses Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛, aka Big S) and Kelly Lin (林熙蕾) — and many more local celebrities set to marry this year — it was perhaps inevitable that talk of Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) tying the knot would resurface — a rumor that seems to pop up on the celebrity radar once every six months.
In 2008, the aspiring actress and Taiwan’s top model listed a timetable for marriage that at the time included being seen in public with a man, nuptials the following year (2009) and giving birth one year later (2010). Here we are approaching the end of the fourth month of 2011, and gossip hounds are wondering why the 36-year-old isn’t hitched.
So when Lin revealed on variety show SS Swallow Hsiao Yen Night (SS小燕之夜) that Scott Chiu (邱士楷), the son of a toilet manufacturer, is “more than just a friend,” the media thought they had that “gotcha” moment. Wedding bells? Probably not. Gossipmongers failed to realize that Lin may have meant her comments in the sense of sibling love. Instead, they took her words, in addition to comments made by her family on Chiu’s suitability, to mean that a Lin-Chiu wedding is a foregone conclusion.
Photo: Taipei times
“Where do these rumors come from?” Lin said.
When asked for comment, Lin’s manager, Fan Ching-mei (范清美), said that a spring 2012 wedding is possible, though she refused to speculate on who the lucky man might be.
While rumors fly of some people falling in love, others are falling out of it, with the ongoing breakup saga between Chinese model Mavis Pan (潘霜霜) and Hong Kong singer and actor Raymond Lam (林峰) taking a new turn last week, according to reports in the Oriental Daily and United Daily News.
The scandal, dubbed the “bedroom photo” (床照) incident, broke last month when the Hong Kong edition of Next Magazine ran photos showing a scantily clad Pan in bed taking shots of herself and a sleeping Lam.
Hong Kong’s media speculated that Pan leaked the photos to Next after she found out Lam was seeing other women while they were dating. Others said it was a ruse to increase Pan’s waning popularity.
Pan, who journos have dubbed “Little Shu Qi” (小舒淇) due to her voluptuous figure and pouty lips, said over the weekend that she dumped Lam because he was a good-for-nothing lothario. She added that she had found videos on Lam’s mobile phone that feature women in sexually explicit positions a la Edison Chen (陳冠希).
“A lot of media reports say Lam had trusted the wrong person. I actually feel I was the one who met the wrong person,” she said.
The Pan-Lam brouhaha is arguably a storm in a teacup compared to an unfolding sex scandal here in Taiwan.
A neophyte actress has blown the whistle on a large and sophisticated online prostitution ring, reported NOWnews, the China Times and United Daily News. The service, allegedly in operation for over a decade, is said to have included up to 4,000 escorts, among them aspiring actresses and models.
Those currently on “active duty” (現役) are said to number between 300 and 400.
Gossip hounds have been drooling over the prospect that some of Taiwan’s top starlets might be involved after police confirmed that the whistle-blower was a young celebrity who was allegedly being blackmailed by the Web site’s owner, identified as Chang Hung-tao (張鴻濤).
The starlet, who has appeared in a number of dramas and met Chang through her agent six months ago, said she blew the lid off the ring after Chang tried to blackmail her because she wanted to strike out on her own.
Chang allegedly sent a man posing as a client and used a hidden camera to film the starlet engaged in sexual acts, and then threatened to make the video public unless she paid him NT$1.6 million. After she paid the ransom, however, Chang refused to let her off the hook and demanded additional money.
Amid thoughts of suicide, the aspiring actress went to the police, who conducted an investigation and arrested Chang and 15 other accomplices for extortion. Police said Chang had used similar methods to keep other girls from leaving.
Though the reports did not release the celebrity’s name, they did say that Chang’s client list exceeded 30,000 men and women, some of whom are powerful figures in the financial and entertainment industries and politics. The ring allegedly charged between NT$10,000 to NT$200,000 per sexual transaction.
On Jan. 17, Beijing announced that it would allow residents of Shanghai and Fujian Province to visit Taiwan. The two sides are still working out the details. President William Lai (賴清德) has been promoting cross-strait tourism, perhaps to soften the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) attitudes, perhaps as a sop to international and local opinion leaders. Likely the latter, since many observers understand that the twin drivers of cross-strait tourism — the belief that Chinese tourists will bring money into Taiwan, and the belief that tourism will create better relations — are both false. CHINESE TOURISM PIPE DREAM Back in July
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