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.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra