It's the man!
This afternoon (of Aug 1st), I was given a chance to personally participate in a Steemian type D-live reporting as right now my family is having a small getaway-from-daily-life vacation in Taipei (also for celebrating my wife's birthday) and we came across this hilarious comedian in the hallway and later googled to confirm that it is him - the great CHOW the party king himself might live next door to us! (see the best of CHOW video here)
According to the news, CHOW, actually the Korean American actor Ken Jeong, played the main role Louis Huang’s younger brother Gene in the the second season finale of Fresh Off the Boat - a popular primetime comedy series that talks about the American life of a migrant family the Huangs from Taiwan. Season three is coming soon which will start with the Huangs on vacation in Taipei for Gene's (CHOW's) wedding. See the news here.
Report from the spot
The show is truly hilarious. We really love it. Yet still we don’t want to interfere with whatever the cast (I suppose) are doing next door. From time to time, we can hear a lot of laughing and talking sometimes yelling from next door - maybe they are having a party or maybe they are shooting? Can’t really tell and don’t want to eavesdrop too much. Cannot divulge the room number to the audience either (don’t have what it takes to be a parparazzi!). But still this is a D-live report post, I need to feed something to the audience here! So this is the window views of this hotel (the ones from CHOW’s room should be 98% similar). Our room is standard but the one next door is ensuite and much bigger - we guess it might be their temporary headquarter.
About the hotel and its story
Some may easily find out that the hotel is Regent Taipei (this information I think is ok) - a 5-start hotel run by a local hotel group Formosa International Hotels, the largest listed hotel operator in Taiwan. FIH acquired the Regent brand and Regent Hotels & Resorts becomes a Taiwan-based international luxury hotel group. This hotel is a very popular choice among Japanese tourists (lately increasing tourists from mainland China) and many internatioanl celebrities also like to stay here when they visit Taiwan. In our a few staying experience with Regent in recent years, we had bumped into Tom Cruise and then Hamasaki Ayumi (濱崎步). And this time CHOW! Aren’t we lucky?
Another well known story for Regent Taipei happened when Luc Besson chose Taipei and the Regent hotel and came here to film his movie Lucy starring Scarlett Johansson. It created a hype in Taiwan back then since it is rare for directors with international influence to take shots here. Of course, the sexy and charming star was also a huge factor in this. The interesting thing is that there is also a big Korean presence in this film including Korean gansters in the plot and Korean actors - Taiwan, Korea, Regent, and the entertainment industry. All here live @ Steemit. Here is a article about it from WSJ: Taiwan Pride Gets a Boost With ‘Lucy,’ Starring Scarlett Johansson
Best wishes and welcome
Finally I wish CHOW Mr Ken a pleasant shooting experience in Taipei and look forward to watching Season 3 soon. And, warmest welcome to all Steemians to come to visit Taiwan. It was called Formosa (meaning beautiful island) by the Portuguese explorers in the 16th century. Here is an official promotion video from Taiwan tourism authority - Time for Taiwan. indeed.
Supplement
In case you want to see more, I will share some photos taken from our room or around the hotel. Will post some more hotel photos if this post gets popular or someone requests
Final Note
Apologies to those who expect more from this encounter. All the contents are 100% genuine. The post is to reflect the fact that anyone here on Steemit can try to be a reporter. And my experience from this is: really excited but don’t know how to strike the balance and writing news style is really hard.
And finally if you may, please say happy birthday to my wife in your reply. She is not happy about my 'reporting' during her birthday!