Yang Teng-kuei (楊登魁), an influential figure in the nation’s entertainment, film and television industries, died of a stroke at Taipei Veterans General Hospital Monday at the age of 74.
Yang had been hospitalized since Dec. 17 after suffering a stroke, a statement issued by Polyface Entertainment Media Group said, which was founded by Yang in March 2011.
The statement said Yang’s condition had not improved despite various types of treatment, including a transcatheter arterial embolization.
Photo: Wang Wen-lin, Taipei Times
His health deteriorated further and he died at 5:12am on Monday, with his family and many good friends by his side, the statement added.
Taiwanese film director Chu Yen-ping (朱延平) posted a photograph of himself with Yang on his Facebook page, with a caption that read: “[Yang], forever my boss.”
Yang is credited with nurturing many of the entertainment industry’s big stars in Taiwan and the rest of the Chinese-speaking community.
In the early years of his career, Yang and his partners operated a pop concert hall in Kaohsiung that became a landmark of the nation’s variety show culture and a launcing pad for many local TV and movie personalities, including Yu and Chang Fei (張菲).
Yang also invested in filmmaking, which helped put actors and actresses from Taiwan, Hong Kong and China into the spotlight. Among those he helped are Brigitte Lin (林青霞) and Sally Yeh (葉蒨文).
Known for his outgoing and gregarious personality, Yang was also alleged to have links with organized crime. When Taiwan launched its first major crackdown on organized crime in 1985, Yang was arrested and sent to the notorious, but now defunct, prison on Green Island (綠島) off the east coast, where he was kept for three years.
Following his release, Yang focused on filmmaking. A City of Sadness (悲情城市), a 1989 film whose production he oversaw, won the coveted best film award in the Venice International Film Festival that year.
However, he was rounded up again shortly afterward in a second crackdown on organized crime for allegedly operating underground gambling dens.
After a statute on compensating those whose rights were violated during the Martial Law era took effect in 1995, Yang applied for compensation on the grounds that he was imprisoned twice without a trial. He eventually received NT$480,000 (US$16,500) in compensation.
In 1992, he set up the nation’s first cable TV station, but later decided to live abroad for several years after a cable TV channel under his company was involved in a professional baseball gambling scandal.
After returning to Taipei, he set up GTV and produced a number of smash hit drama series, including Royal Tramp, which was based on noted Hong Kong writer Jin Yong’s (金庸) novel of same name.
In 2011, he founded Polyface group with an ambition of investing up to NT$3 billion over five years to make Taiwan a new hub of global filmmaking and showbusiness.
Yang said at the Polyface inaugural ceremony that the group was founded through the joint efforts of his friends in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China to put the local entertainment industry on the world stage. The group has since produced a number of hit movies.
The Polyface statement said a temporary memorial hall will open on tomorrow where his friends can pay their last respects and that a funeral will be held in the form of a concert, the date of which will be announced at a later date.
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm early yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, less than a week after a typhoon barreled across the nation. The agency issued an advisory at 3:30am stating that the 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, of the Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, with a 100km radius. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA
Residents have called on the Taipei City Government to reconsider its plan to demolish a four-decades-old pedestrian overpass near Daan Forest Park. The 42-year-old concrete and steel structure that serves as an elevated walkway over the intersection of Heping and Xinsheng roads is to be closed on Tuesday in preparation for demolition slated for completion by the end of the month. However, in recent days some local residents have been protesting the planned destruction of the intersection overpass that is rendered more poetically as “sky bridge” in Chinese. “This bridge carries the community’s collective memory,” said a man surnamed Chuang
FATALITIES: The storm claimed at least two lives — a female passenger in a truck that was struck by a falling tree and a man who was hit by a utility pole Workers cleared fallen trees and shop owners swept up debris yesterday after one of the biggest typhoons to hit the nation in decades claimed at least two lives. Typhoon Kong-rey was packing winds of 184kph when it slammed into eastern Taiwan on Thursday, uprooting trees, triggering floods and landslides, and knocking out power as it swept across the nation. A 56-year-old female foreign national died from her injuries after the small truck she was in was struck by a falling tree on Provincial Highway 14A early on Thursday. The second death was reported at 8pm in Taipei on Thursday after a 48-year-old man
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm earlier today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, in this year's Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am, the CWA said. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) with a 100km radius, it said. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA meteorologist Huang En-hung (黃恩宏) said. However, a more accurate forecast would be made on Wednesday, when Yinxing is