Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) has been in the news quite a bit lately, and for all the wrong reasons. Last week, pictures of a woman with an uncanny resemblance to her surfaced during the Edison Chen scandal and this time, she refers to Hong Kong as a foreign country (国外), and talks of how she wants to gain glory for the people of Taiwan (“为台湾人争光"). Her Chinese fans are not finding it funny, and she is getting it big time on the Internet. God knows what will happen to her, but we do know the last time Zhang Huimei (张惠妹) sang the Taiwanese anthem, she was barred from performing in China.
Fans of Gillian Chung wait overnight at the Beijing airport and mob her upon her arrival. Repeated questions by a reporter of whether she accepts Edison's Chen apology go unanswered:
Unconfirmed rumours have surfaced in Hong Kong that at a recent meeting between Nicolas Tse, Cecilia Cheung and Edison Chen at the Four Seasons Hotel (where Edison is staying), Nicolas was unable to control himself and attempted to hit Edison. Cecilia tried to restrain Nicolas and broke down into hysterics, and security guards quickly came to Edison's protection.
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
Jolin will indeed get a backlash for this, however I don't think it is really proper to say that this puts her in the press "for the wrong reasons". This terminology implies she has made a mistake, and implies a judgement on your part (which you are free to make, intentionally or not, but which should be highlighted no less). The correct way to say this would be that she has had a lot of bad press lately that may negatively impact her career.
PRC nationalism aside, the matter is clearly one of perspective. She is simply voicing what many Taiwanese think and say. Regardless of the political situation, most DO see Hong Kong as guowai. It is not uncommon for Taiwanese to say they are leaving the country to go to Hong Kong or to China (whether they call it China or the mainland) no less. It is perfectly conversational. And most WOULD want to bring honour to the Taiwanese (which is the correct adjective to describe people from the island of Taiwan). Who wouldn't want to bring honour to the place they are from?
If this shows anything, it is the ridiculous overreactions of mainland Chinese fans, who are incapable of recognising the situation. Now "gaffe" is also problematic. The question is, did she mean to say what she said in the way she said it?