Zaizai cannot differentiate "an" and "ang", does not speak Taiwanese

Monday April 19, 2010 Taiwan
Source : http://udn.com/NEWS
Translation by sytwo @ VIC/ AF

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Pix : Zaizai does not speak Taiwanese, scaring producer Virginia Liu


The co-produced (Taiwan/ China) drama "Return Home" starring Zaizai is about to start filming, and only now producer Virgina Liu discovered that he does not speak Taiwanese ! Her chin nearly fell down : "Isn't Zaizai from Ilan?" So besides learning Japanes, he now has to quickly add-in Taiwanese too.

In fact, people from Ilan does not necessarily speak Taiwanese, but Zaizai is well-known to be unable to differentiate between "an" and "ang", for example "crashing a car" (zhuang che) becomes "drill a car" (zuan che), leading many people to think that it was Taiwanese-accented Mandarin. In fact the two things are not related. The real situation is that he can only speak single Taiwanese words but not complete sentences.

Zaizai's manager laughingly said that if Zaizai has a face that looks like a foreigner (westerner), maybe the drama "Return Home" would not have looked for him to take part. In the drama which is set during the Japanese Occupation era, although Zaizai is a Taiwanese but he is a military doctor with the Japanese army. The Japanese do not see him as a Japanese, and he is also not accepted/ recognized in Taiwan or Mainland China. Zaizai has currently receive the script for 10 episodes, and the Taiwanese language teacher has recorded the Taiwanese script into MP3 for Zaizai to prepare his homework. As for Japanese language, although he often goes to Japan for work he only knows basic sentences and still need to "jiayou" (refuel/ work hard). Virginia Liu said : "For April, let Zaizai concentrate on learning Japanese and Taiwanese, and the drama will proceed to Shanghai for filming at the end of May."

Previously, after she (Virginia Liu) lost the law suit versus Eddie Peng, she originally intended to appeal, but has recently given up on this idea. Only thing is that her lawyer Chih-Hao Lin only previous lost record was the former president Chen **, but now has to add-on Eddie Peng.

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