What's Ma Ying-jeou Up To?

Former Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou working in a bookshop for a day

Does former Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou have a new gig?

In a recent video the 68-year-old is seen working as a shopkeeper in a bookstore in Taipei. As he's wearing a baseball cap and a black mask, most people don't recognize him at all. When customers approach him at the cashier, he suggests that they buy his memoir that was released in December.



Many say no -- in one case a woman said she hardly reads books anymore. But when he pulls down his mask, people do a double take and are excited to see him. He offers to sign the books for them too.

However he's not quite cut out to be a cashier. One customer asked to use JKo Pay, the local version of Apple Pay, and Ma seems to have no clue what it is or how to process the payment.

He tried to persuade customers to buy his memoir

The video has been seen over 150,000 times since Ma's office posted it on YouTube on Friday. His office explained the video is meant to show another side of the Harvard Law School graduate.

"We want to let the public know that the ex-president is actually an easy-going person, the man next door type," an official from the office said.

But when asked about whether this was an attempt to garner popularity again in the hopes of running for president in 2020, the office was coy.

"This kind of question has been around for some time, you'll have to ask the former president because we have no idea at all," the official said.

He made enough to buy ink and brushes to write couplets

It seems his popularity has risen in the past year or so, in contrast to when he was president, especially in the last few years of his second term which ended in 2016.

When Ma was first elected in 2008, his popularity approval rating was at 68 percent. But his government's mishandling of the economy and issues like the typhoon that killed almost 700 people in 2009, as well as the Sunflower movement -- where hundreds of students stormed the legislature in 2014 -- made him highly unpopular.

And in case you're wondering -- in the end Ma managed to sell 30 copies of his book, enough to buy Chinese calligraphy brushes and ink to write Lunar New Year couplets for his supporters.

The Real Side of Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan's memoir is very honest

I have yet to read Jackie Chan's explosive memoir, Never Grow Up, but I don't want to.

He sounds like an absolute pig.

Part of it stems from not growing up with his family -- his father emigrated to Australia where he worked as a cook for the American Embassy. Chan wasn't a good student and so his parents took him out of the school system, and at the age of six sent to the China Drama Academy where he boarded and trained for 10 years in martial arts and acrobatics.

He reveals how much of a b***** he was to women

There the students had to train 18 hours a day from 5am, doing stretching, acrobatics, weapons training, acting and martial arts. In a 2008 interview, Chan recalled, "It was really arduous, we hardly had enough to eat, enough clothes to keep warm, training was extremely tiring, and Master could cane us anytime!"

As a result Chan didn't have much experience socializing with others, and in Never Grow Up he reveals his various relationships with women including prostitutes, but he treated them terribly. The best known story is how he cheated on his wife, Taiwanese actress Joan Lin by fooling around with beauty queen Elaine Ng Yi-lei and it resulted in the birth of his daughter Etta Ng.

She recently declared she is lesbian and married her Canadian girlfriend last week. Both biological parents did not congratulate her, nor does Chan mention her in his book.

He also recounts going on a date with singer Teresa Teng at a French restaurant. She daintily held a spoon while she ate her soup, while he picked up the bowl and slurped it down...

Chan with his Taiwanese wife actress Joan Lin

Aside from not being gentlemanly, Chan wasn't much of a good father in the beginning. One time he and Lin were having an argument and he picked up his toddler son Jaycee with one hand and threw him across the room, landing on the sofa. Chan recalls Lin being "terrified".

She said: "He's just a child. Why did you do that?" He apologized and said it would never happen again.

This lack of education may explain Chan's insecurities and his pursuit of wealth and fame. In the book he boasts about how much cash he carried around and always paid for his entourage's meals. He would also walk into stores and buy expensive watches to show off his wealth.

It's the usual story of nouveau riche people, and Chan let his wealth get to his head.

He writes that as a stuntman, "We all knew that if something went wrong we wouldn't live to see the sun rise the next day. We had a short term mentality which means recklessly spending our money."

He had an affair with Elaine Ng who gave birth to Etta (left)

In another part of the book Chan writes about being drunk all the time and crashed his Porsche in the morning and his Mercedes-Benz later that evening.

It's interesting the multimillionaire 64-year-old is being so frank about everything -- why did he do that or he was following someone's advice to come clean? It's a lot of information for the public to take in, a lot of it undesirable.

Chan lost his integrity several years ago when he began spouting pro-Beijing views that left a sour taste.

In 2009 during a panel discussion at the Boao Forum for Asia, Chan question whether or not freedom was a good thing. "I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."

A few years later in 2012 he also criticized Hong Kong people for protesting too much.

Who is going to buy his book? Not people in Hong Kong that's for sure!

Ebert's Life Itself

Reviewers Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert look like professors on TV

On my flights to and from Paris recently, I limited my time watching movies and such as I needed to get as much sleep as possible. But I made sure I watched a few documentaries.

The first one was Life Itself, documenting the last few months of Pulitzer prize-winning film review Roger Ebert's life as he was dying of cancer in 2013 at the age of 70.

Filmmaker Steve James deftly wove Ebert's memoir of the same name with scenes of following him around as he went in and out of hospital, or at home, and interviews with friends, filmmakers, and his wife Chaz.

Ebert the day after he won a Pulitzer Prize for his review

We learn that at an early age Ebert, who hailed from Urbana, Illinois, loved words and writing. By the time he started in newspapers as a undergraduate, he was already writing stories like a seasoned reporter.

His colleagues talked about how Ebert would just take charge of the situation, or just the way he wrote a story showed how observant he was, and chose words that perfectly summed up the situation or his opinion of something.

Later he got a job at the Chicago Sun-Times and was loyal to the end, despite the paper going through financial difficulties. It was here that he was assigned to review movies from 1967, and latched onto the beat like it was a natural thing to do.

An interesting fact is that he helped Russ Meyer write the screenplay for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which had a crazy combination of sex, violence and bawdy dialogue. It didn't do well in the box office, but now is considered a film that was ahead of its time.

In 1975 he and Gene Siskel began doing film reviews on television. As their former producers pointed out, these two did not have the look for TV at all, looking like university professors, and Ebert in particular too keen to show off his expansive vocabulary.

For his wedding to Chaz, Ebert splashed out on the nuptials

What was also pointed out in Life Itself was that the two hated each other. There were outtakes of them verbally jousting with insults that were quite intense. It's amazing they didn't kill each other on camera.

But as they became more successful on television, they realized they needed each other to keep the show going and their relationship became more amicable.

However, when Siskel was diagnosed with brain cancer in May 1998, he did not tell Ebert, and died in February 1999, much to the shock of everyone.

Ebert was very upset, and according to his wife, decided that if he was ill, he would go very public with it to let everyone know. What was very sweet was seeing him and Chaz together -- you could tell they loved each other very much.

He married her at the age of 50, and accepted her children and grandchildren as his own. She is successful in her own right, a trial attorney, but it seems towards the end of his life she spent a lot of time looking after him.

Cancer did not keep Ebert's spirits down -- he kept writing

In 2002 he was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer, and though it was removed, cancer kept coming back, to the point where he was unable to speak. He adopted a computerized voice, and in many of the scenes, it's horrifying at first to see there is a giant hole in his mouth, the chin part hanging out because his lower jaw is gone.

However, he still kept up his spirits, chiding his wife, or being light-hearted. Director James had so many questions for Ebert towards the end that he couldn't answer them all, which is probably why he turned to Ebert's memoir -- that thankfully is narrated in his own voice -- as well as interviews with friends to give some answers.

What was interesting was that despite being ill, Ebert was keen to keep writing. He started a blog and tweeted. He embraced these new online mediums so well that it enabled him to not only keep in touch with his existing fans but garner new ones too.

One young African American filmmaker reminisced about meeting Ebert when she was a young girl, and took a picture with him in the 1980s. That chance encounter inspired her to make films, and when Ebert reviewed her film and gave it a good review, she emailed him with the picture they took decades ago, telling him the story of how they met.

He immediately blogged about it, complete with the picture, which she found so touching.

Ebert knew he had a good run, and wrote this three years before he died:

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

I remember watching him and Siskel on television, making passionate arguments for and against whatever movies they were reviewing. Ebert was the more studious-looking one, Siskel more suave and debonair. I didn't like one more than the other, but found it interesting how much they loved movies.

Watching Life Itself helps viewers understand where Ebert came from, his passion for writing, for movies, for life. He was admired by his colleagues and directors, particularly Martin Scorsese, who was indebted to both Ebert and Siskel for supporting him and his career. The Raging Bull and Gangs of New York director executive produced the documentary.

Ebert lived an amazing life and enjoyed every moment, and he is indirectly encouraging us to do the same.

I thought I would only mention each documentary briefly, but it turns out I'll save the other two for the next blog post!