Unlike many of her celebrity peers, Singaporean starlet Joanne Peh (白薇秀) has carefully cultivated a low-key, girl-next-door image.
The actress, who has said her favorite books include Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations, will take the stage with other performers at the end of this month for the Thye Hua Kwan Charity Show, a televised fund-raiser for the Singapore-based Thye Hua Kwan Moral Society, whose services include providing free meals for the poor and counseling for gamblers.
At a press conference last week, held to plug the event, Peh told assembled media that she would perform a belly-dance routine in the hope of helping to raise the target amount of NT$90 million. Intelligent, community-minded and hard working: Will these qualities help Peh reach the big time? Only time will tell.
Photo: Taipei Times
Also stumping for a good cause last week was Taiwanese actress Annie Yi (伊能靜). She bared all at a press conference in Beijing last week for the US-based animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and declared that she would “rather go naked than wear fur,” our sister paper the Liberty Times reported.
A little digging under the surface, however, reveals that this is the same celebrity who bragged to the media in 2005 that she owned a closet full of fur coats — a statement she later retracted after receiving a barrage of criticism from animal rights groups.
Hitting the nail on the head, she told the assembled media: “I was once ignorant and loved the luxury and extravagance of fur. But now I understand that animals are tortured to make fur coats, so I’ll no longer wear them.”
While Yi is prepared to let it all hang out, Taiwanese singer-actor Jerry Yan (言承旭) is keeping his cards close to his chest. Returning from a meet and greet in Japan over the weekend, Yan was bombarded with questions by reporters who wanted to know if he had met up with rumored flame Lin Chi-ling (林志玲), who is in Japan filming the upcoming drama The 101th Proposal (101次求婚).
The reporters were particularly interested in Yan’s response as Lin’s father had recently dubbed him “the light of Taiwan” (台灣之光) because of his popularity and charity work. Yan ignored all the questions and was quickly bundled into a waiting car.
And finally, it’s official: funnyman Jackie Wu (吳宗憲) might be retiring from the entertainment business. At least that’s what he promised to do in the summer of last year if he were found guilty of fraud.
The Liberty Times reported that the accusation stemmed from a business deal with Hsu Fang-yang (許豐揚), who was suspected of misappropriating funds from his company to invest in Wu’s LED company.
At the time Wu, one of Taiwan’s most popular and highly paid entertainers, and who has been involved in several failed business ventures, had blubbered that he’d done nothing wrong and never lied to his fans.
Ah, but what a difference a year makes. Prosecutors met up with Wu on Tuesday for a chat because they suspect that he made several false transactions and had illegally pocketed NT$12.5 million.
They later indicted the variety show host, who now faces up to 10 years in jail.
Predictably, Wu told a press conference on Wednesday that prosecutors didn’t have all the facts and denied any wrongdoing.
“I definitely, definitely didn’t do anything illegal,” he said.
Perhaps Wu should seek some help from the Thye Hua Kwan Moral Society.
From an anonymous office in a New Delhi mall, matrimonial detective Bhavna Paliwal runs the rule over prospective husbands and wives — a booming industry in India, where younger generations are increasingly choosing love matches over arranged marriage. The tradition of partners being carefully selected by the two families remains hugely popular, but in a country where social customs are changing rapidly, more and more couples are making their own matches. So for some families, the first step when young lovers want to get married is not to call a priest or party planner but a sleuth like Paliwal with high-tech spy
With raging waters moving as fast as 3 meters per second, it’s said that the Roaring Gate Channel (吼門水道) evokes the sound of a thousand troop-bound horses galloping. Situated between Penghu’s Xiyu (西嶼) and Baisha (白沙) islands, early inhabitants ranked the channel as the second most perilous waterway in the archipelago; the top was the seas around the shoals to the far north. The Roaring Gate also concealed sunken reefs, and was especially nasty when the northeasterly winds blew during the autumn and winter months. Ships heading to the archipelago’s main settlement of Magong (馬公) had to go around the west side
Several recent articles have explored historical invasions of Taiwan, both real and planned, in order to examine what problems the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would encounter if it invaded. The military and geographic obstacles remain formidable. Taiwan, though, is part of a larger package of issues created by the broad front of PRC expansion. That package also includes the Japanese islands of Okinawa and the Senkaku Islands, known in Taiwan as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), to the north, with the South China Sea and certain islands in the northern Philippines to the south. THE DEBATE Previous invasions of Taiwan make good objects
When Portugal returned its colony Macao to China in 1999, coffee shop owner Daniel Chao was a first grader living in a different world. Since then his sleepy hometown has transformed into a bustling gaming hub lined with glittering casinos. Its once quiet streets are now jammed with tourist buses. But the growing wealth of the city dubbed the “Las Vegas of the East” has not brought qualities of sustainable development such as economic diversity and high civic participation. “What was once a relaxed, free place in my childhood has become a place that is crowded and highly commercialized,” said Chao. Macao yesterday
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