Hong Kong’s celebrity playboy, Patrick Tse, is 71. His girlfriend is 23. But he believes that age is no boundary to true love.
12 November 2008
Hong Kong veteran actor, 71-year-old Patrick Tse sees nothing wrong with dating someone younger. After all, his girlfriend is the ripe old age of 23.
Shin Min Daily News reported that at a recent show hosted in Shanghai, he spoke about his relationship and proudly claimed that “love has no boundaries” and that they are both “truly and very much in love”.
The father of popular Hong Kong singer-actor, Nicholas Tse, is currently dating Coco, a Shanghainese who is the same age as his daughter, Jennifer Tse.
However, Patrick does have a few convictions when it comes to dating young women: He does not believe in fooling around and causing distress to the other party, and he does not believe in marriage or having children.
“It’s not beneficial for the future well-being of the child, so it’s best not to get married. The current situation is ideal. It’s not easy bringing up a child, although making one is easy,” he said.
According to the Chinese daily newspaper, Patrick revealed that he knows what goes on in people’s minds when they see an older man dating a younger woman and he does not care what others think.
“It’s ok as long as the both of us do not mind being together.
“I’m much more energetic than most of the young adults these days. When it comes to dating younger women, I’m only World No. 2. The No. 1 title should go to Franklin Yang instead,” he joked.
Franklin Yang, who is currently 86 years old, is a Chinese-born American physicist who married Weng Fan in 2005 when she was 28.
Patrick strongly believes that it was fate that had brought him and Coco together.
“Fate brings people together. Without it, no two beings would have had the opportunity of meeting each other in the first place.
“She’s from Shanghai and I’m from Hong Kong. We live so far apart from each other and it was fate that had brought us together,” he exclaimed.
Patrick also expressed that he feels very blessed at the moment because of the people around him - his mother, children, grandchildren, as well as Coco. His family is also very supportive about his relationship with her.
“Nicholas and the rest of them are very happy for me. I’m really quite lucky to have such a pretty girlfriend,” he said.
DONGGUAN, China (WSJ) — Workers have flocked to southern China for plentiful manufacturing jobs in industries that offer better pay than farm work. Now, they are finding themselves in an unusual jam: lining up for increasingly scarce employment.
On a recent Saturday, Dongguan was rife with trademarks of a thriving southern China city, with smog-choked skies and cars honking in traffic. But in the midst of the bustling scene some 2,000 people, many of them newly out of work, were trying to land jobs at an outdoor employment fair in front of the city's railway station.
Most were victims of a severe slowdown in China's toy, textile and plastics industries. "It's very difficult to find jobs these days; people worry a lot about the future," said Li Wuhui, 28 years old, who was fired a few weeks ago from his job as a sales manager at a factory that makes capacitors.
As the global slowdown weakens demand for China's exports, signs of weakness are spreading. Bankruptcies and unemployment are growing throughout southern China, one of the country's main manufacturing zones.
China's customs agency recently reported that half of China's toy exporters that it tracks -- some 3,600 companies -- were driven out of the market in the first seven months of this year. A majority of those were in and around Dongguan, often called the toy-making capital of the world.
It isn't clear whether all of the companies were driven out of business by softening sales. Government policies, set in motion before the current slowdown, were designed to upgrade the economy and improve living conditions, but have raised costs for employers in labor-intensive industries.
Official unemployment data in China are unreliable because government agencies don't tally workers who aren't registered with local governments. In places like Dongguan, unregistered migrant workers comprise a huge share of the work force.
By early spring, according to the Dongguan Association of Foreign-invested Enterprises, some 9,000 factories could shutter their operations in Guangdong, the province that includes Dongguan, resulting in more than 2.7 million new job losses.
Higher prices for energy and raw materials have driven up costs. The Chinese currency has appreciated, which tends to make Chinese-produced goods more expensive overseas. Tougher enforcement of environmental-protection policies has raised costs, as has a new labor law that makes it harder for companies to lay off workers and forces employers to pay for more benefits.
Early this year, those trends already were prompting manufacturers -- especially those from overseas -- to ditch China for certain types of manufacturing, and shift to Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh or Mexico.
Rising unemployment has huge potential ramifications for China's government. Beijing has sought to grow its economy rapidly in recent decades, in part by encouraging exports, in order to soak up huge population flows from rural areas to cities.
The policy was so successful that officials saw an opening in the past two years to upgrade China's industrial base toward more high-tech products, despite the short-term disruptions that shift might cause.
Officials didn't foresee the sudden slowdown triggered by the current global financial crunch. The slump has raised fears among government policy makers that large-scale factory closures could lead to widening unrest. It also could stall the rise in prosperity that has underpinned support for the ruling Communist Party since economic reforms started 30 years ago.
GST Autoleather, a maker of automotive leather products from Southfield, Mich., recently terminated Chinese production of leather products for Japan's Honda Motor Co. GST sent the production, about $11 million annually, to its facilities in Mexico.
China's export-tax refund rates may go still lower. "It certainly forces us to take a look at shifting more production out of China" and into other countries such as Vietnam and Thailand, said Joe Cooley, vice president of sales for GST's Chinese unit in Shanghai.
By year end, Japanese digital camera maker Olympus Corp. plans to begin producing its lower-end digital-camera lenses and lens-and-zoom units in Vietnam instead of its Chinese factories in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. The company made the change in part because of rising costs in China, according to Kazuya Abe, a senior Olympus executive in Shenzhen.
Beijing is trying to reverse course on export-tax refunds to help them improve profit margins and slow the pace of job losses, but foreign investors are skeptical about whether the moves will last. Over the long term, they believe China will continue to reduce the incentives. The policy is meant in part to improve air and water quality in China. And the tax changes may not be enough to help many small Chinese factories that have been hit by the slump. At the job fair in Dongguan, Zhou Fang, a human-resources manager for an electronics factory, took in 20 résumés during the three-hour fair, 18 of which she said came from people who recently lost jobs. "Just a year ago, wages were rising steadily as we grappled with labor shortages," Ms. Zhou said. "Now, there are so many people available."
— Gao Sen, Kersten Zhang and Sue Feng contributed to this article.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration on Wednesday largely abandoned its plan to buy up toxic mortgage assets and said it will focus its $700 billion financial bailout fund on making direct investments in financial institutions and shoring up consumer credit markets.
The U.S. Treasury Department initially promoted the financial rescue package approved by Congress last month as a vehicle to buy illiquid mortgage assets from banks and other institutions to spur fresh lending.
However, that plan never got off the ground and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told a news conference asset purchases were not the most effective use of the funds.
"This is not going to be the focus," he said. Paulson added, however, that the Treasury would continue to examine the usefulness of "targeted" purchases.
Treasury has already tapped the fund to inject capital into banks and ailing insurer American International Group. Paulson said he was considering a second round of preferred share purchases in both banks and non-bank institutions which, in a fresh twist, would match privately raised funds.
He also said the Treasury was working with the Federal Reserve on a plan to help restore credit flows to U.S. households by using financial rescue funds to lure investors back to markets for securitized debt, such as car loans, student loans and credit cards.
The administration's shifting focus disappointed Wall Street and U.S. stock prices tumbled sharply. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 408 points, or 4.7 percent.
"This hasn't done the Treasury's credibility a world of good," said Alan Ruskin, chief international strategist at RBS Global Banking and Markets in New York. "Basically, they found that the market would applaud direct capital injections more readily than understanding the complexities of reverse auctions to buy assets, so it's a pragmatic choice."
Paulson was unapologetic, saying that by the time the rescue bill was passed on October 3, it was clear the asset purchase plan would take too long and would not be sufficient to calm roiling markets.
"I will never apologize for changing a strategy or an approach if the facts change," he said.
COOL TO CALLS FOR HELP
The $700 billion financial sector bailout is the United States' marquee effort to combat a credit crisis spawned by rising U.S. mortgage defaults that is now wreaking economic damage worldwide.
To help ease the crisis, the U.S. Treasury and bank regulators on Wednesday issued "guidance" for banks encouraging them to lend and to rein in any compensation plans that might lead executives to take excessive risks.
Earlier on Wednesday, Canada announced a plan to buy up another $41 billion in insured mortgages and other steps to try to free-up credit.
Paulson said the U.S. Treasury was duty-bound to help prevent mortgage foreclosures, but he warned that further aid would likely mean a significant government subsidy, signaling a lack of support for a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. proposal for more aggressive aid to borrowers.
The regulator for the two largest U.S. mortgage finance companies -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- unveiled a plan on Tuesday to cut payments for hundreds of thousands of homeowners behind on their payments. That plan, however, would not touch the many loans held by mortgage investors.
Paulson sidestepped questions on whether the Treasury would use bailout funds to help struggling Detroit automakers, as the industry and some lawmakers have called for.
While he said the industry was a "critical" one for the United States, he said the purpose of the program was to provide financial system stability.
He said one option would be to amend legislation to allow $25 billion already approved for efficient vehicle production to be made available more quickly.
So far, the Treasury has focused on providing capital to federally regulated banks and thrifts, but Paulson said it was looking to broaden the effort to cover financial institutions that do not have a federal bank or thrift charter.
"Although the financial system has stabilized, both banks and non-banks may well need more capital given their troubled asset holdings, projections for continued high rates of foreclosures and stagnant U.S. and world economic conditions," he said.
$700 BILLION STILL ENOUGH?
The Treasury has allocated $250 billion of the bailout funds to inject capital into banks and thrifts and it has earmarked another $40 billion to shore up AIG, leaving just $60 billion to dole out before it would have to ask Congress to release the final $350 billion.
Paulson said he had no timeline for that request, which means the decision could be left to the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on January 20.
He also signaled he would not seek to increase the overall size of the bailout fund. "I still am comfortable that, with $700 billion, we have what we need," he said.
With an aim to restoring credit for households, Paulson said the Treasury and Fed were considering setting up a program to increase liquidity for top-rated asset-backed securities, but he provided few details.
"The initial shock of abandoning TARP is hitting stocks, but the support for consumer-level lending may be a silver lining as it goes to the root of what's ailing the economy, namely personal consumption," said Brian Dolan, chief currency strategist at FOREX.com in Bedminster, New Jersey.
It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart Without saying a word you can light up the dark Try as I may I could never explain What I hear when you don't say a thing
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me There's a truth in your eyes sayin' you'll never leave me The touch of your hand says you'll catch me where ever I fall You say it best when you say nothing at all
All day long I can hear people talking out loud But when you hold me near, you drown out the crowd Try as they may they could never define What's being said between your heart and mine
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me There's a truth in your eyes sayin' you'll never leave me The touch of your hand says you'll catch me where ever I fall You say it best when you say nothing at all
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me There's a truth in your eyes sayin' you'll never leave me The touch of your hand says you'll catch me where ever I fall You say it best when you say nothing at all
I just wanna say hello to you But you’re not lookin’ my way Like you trying to act cool I think I lost my mind Back there and then Oh how I let my feelings go
You see, I know it’s just a crush And a crush won’t ever last long No one’s forcing it, boy So you I’ll put aside Thought friends we would be Oh, boy…
*Sadly you took my smile away Every time you look my way It fades away I think it’s best it stays this way Every time you look my way Yeah, it fades away
You just wanna say hello to me Now the table’s turned I’m not lookin’ your way
Don’t get it wrong Oh, it’s twisted up Alright let’s make this story short
You see, I know it’s just a crush And a crush won’t ever last long No one’s forcing it, boy So you I’ll put aside Thought friends we would be Oh, boy…
Repeat *
Whao… Why did it have to go down this way? I’ll admit I feel you when you are near Maybe baby we got it all wrong
5 comments:
Patrick Tse’s girlfriend almost 50 years younger
Hong Kong’s celebrity playboy, Patrick Tse, is 71. His girlfriend is 23. But he believes that age is no boundary to true love.
12 November 2008
Hong Kong veteran actor, 71-year-old Patrick Tse sees nothing wrong with dating someone younger. After all, his girlfriend is the ripe old age of 23.
Shin Min Daily News reported that at a recent show hosted in Shanghai, he spoke about his relationship and proudly claimed that “love has no boundaries” and that they are both “truly and very much in love”.
The father of popular Hong Kong singer-actor, Nicholas Tse, is currently dating Coco, a Shanghainese who is the same age as his daughter, Jennifer Tse.
However, Patrick does have a few convictions when it comes to dating young women: He does not believe in fooling around and causing distress to the other party, and he does not believe in marriage or having children.
“It’s not beneficial for the future well-being of the child, so it’s best not to get married. The current situation is ideal. It’s not easy bringing up a child, although making one is easy,” he said.
According to the Chinese daily newspaper, Patrick revealed that he knows what goes on in people’s minds when they see an older man dating a younger woman and he does not care what others think.
“It’s ok as long as the both of us do not mind being together.
“I’m much more energetic than most of the young adults these days. When it comes to dating younger women, I’m only World No. 2. The No. 1 title should go to Franklin Yang instead,” he joked.
Franklin Yang, who is currently 86 years old, is a Chinese-born American physicist who married Weng Fan in 2005 when she was 28.
Patrick strongly believes that it was fate that had brought him and Coco together.
“Fate brings people together. Without it, no two beings would have had the opportunity of meeting each other in the first place.
“She’s from Shanghai and I’m from Hong Kong. We live so far apart from each other and it was fate that had brought us together,” he exclaimed.
Patrick also expressed that he feels very blessed at the moment because of the people around him - his mother, children, grandchildren, as well as Coco. His family is also very supportive about his relationship with her.
“Nicholas and the rest of them are very happy for me. I’m really quite lucky to have such a pretty girlfriend,” he said.
Chinese Laborers Face Grim Job Search
Norihiko Shirouzu
November 10, 2008
DONGGUAN, China (WSJ) — Workers have flocked to southern China for plentiful manufacturing jobs in industries that offer better pay than farm work. Now, they are finding themselves in an unusual jam: lining up for increasingly scarce employment.
On a recent Saturday, Dongguan was rife with trademarks of a thriving southern China city, with smog-choked skies and cars honking in traffic. But in the midst of the bustling scene some 2,000 people, many of them newly out of work, were trying to land jobs at an outdoor employment fair in front of the city's railway station.
Most were victims of a severe slowdown in China's toy, textile and plastics industries. "It's very difficult to find jobs these days; people worry a lot about the future," said Li Wuhui, 28 years old, who was fired a few weeks ago from his job as a sales manager at a factory that makes capacitors.
As the global slowdown weakens demand for China's exports, signs of weakness are spreading. Bankruptcies and unemployment are growing throughout southern China, one of the country's main manufacturing zones.
China's customs agency recently reported that half of China's toy exporters that it tracks -- some 3,600 companies -- were driven out of the market in the first seven months of this year. A majority of those were in and around Dongguan, often called the toy-making capital of the world.
It isn't clear whether all of the companies were driven out of business by softening sales. Government policies, set in motion before the current slowdown, were designed to upgrade the economy and improve living conditions, but have raised costs for employers in labor-intensive industries.
Official unemployment data in China are unreliable because government agencies don't tally workers who aren't registered with local governments. In places like Dongguan, unregistered migrant workers comprise a huge share of the work force.
By early spring, according to the Dongguan Association of Foreign-invested Enterprises, some 9,000 factories could shutter their operations in Guangdong, the province that includes Dongguan, resulting in more than 2.7 million new job losses.
Higher prices for energy and raw materials have driven up costs. The Chinese currency has appreciated, which tends to make Chinese-produced goods more expensive overseas. Tougher enforcement of environmental-protection policies has raised costs, as has a new labor law that makes it harder for companies to lay off workers and forces employers to pay for more benefits.
Early this year, those trends already were prompting manufacturers -- especially those from overseas -- to ditch China for certain types of manufacturing, and shift to Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh or Mexico.
Rising unemployment has huge potential ramifications for China's government. Beijing has sought to grow its economy rapidly in recent decades, in part by encouraging exports, in order to soak up huge population flows from rural areas to cities.
The policy was so successful that officials saw an opening in the past two years to upgrade China's industrial base toward more high-tech products, despite the short-term disruptions that shift might cause.
Officials didn't foresee the sudden slowdown triggered by the current global financial crunch. The slump has raised fears among government policy makers that large-scale factory closures could lead to widening unrest. It also could stall the rise in prosperity that has underpinned support for the ruling Communist Party since economic reforms started 30 years ago.
GST Autoleather, a maker of automotive leather products from Southfield, Mich., recently terminated Chinese production of leather products for Japan's Honda Motor Co. GST sent the production, about $11 million annually, to its facilities in Mexico.
China's export-tax refund rates may go still lower. "It certainly forces us to take a look at shifting more production out of China" and into other countries such as Vietnam and Thailand, said Joe Cooley, vice president of sales for GST's Chinese unit in Shanghai.
By year end, Japanese digital camera maker Olympus Corp. plans to begin producing its lower-end digital-camera lenses and lens-and-zoom units in Vietnam instead of its Chinese factories in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. The company made the change in part because of rising costs in China, according to Kazuya Abe, a senior Olympus executive in Shenzhen.
Beijing is trying to reverse course on export-tax refunds to help them improve profit margins and slow the pace of job losses, but foreign investors are skeptical about whether the moves will last. Over the long term, they believe China will continue to reduce the incentives. The policy is meant in part to improve air and water quality in China. And the tax changes may not be enough to help many small Chinese factories that have been hit by the slump. At the job fair in Dongguan, Zhou Fang, a human-resources manager for an electronics factory, took in 20 résumés during the three-hour fair, 18 of which she said came from people who recently lost jobs. "Just a year ago, wages were rising steadily as we grappled with labor shortages," Ms. Zhou said. "Now, there are so many people available."
— Gao Sen, Kersten Zhang and Sue Feng contributed to this article.
U.S. backs away from plan to buy bad assets
By David Lawder
Nov 12, 2008
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration on Wednesday largely abandoned its plan to buy up toxic mortgage assets and said it will focus its $700 billion financial bailout fund on making direct investments in financial institutions and shoring up consumer credit markets.
The U.S. Treasury Department initially promoted the financial rescue package approved by Congress last month as a vehicle to buy illiquid mortgage assets from banks and other institutions to spur fresh lending.
However, that plan never got off the ground and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told a news conference asset purchases were not the most effective use of the funds.
"This is not going to be the focus," he said. Paulson added, however, that the Treasury would continue to examine the usefulness of "targeted" purchases.
Treasury has already tapped the fund to inject capital into banks and ailing insurer American International Group. Paulson said he was considering a second round of preferred share purchases in both banks and non-bank institutions which, in a fresh twist, would match privately raised funds.
He also said the Treasury was working with the Federal Reserve on a plan to help restore credit flows to U.S. households by using financial rescue funds to lure investors back to markets for securitized debt, such as car loans, student loans and credit cards.
The administration's shifting focus disappointed Wall Street and U.S. stock prices tumbled sharply. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 408 points, or 4.7 percent.
"This hasn't done the Treasury's credibility a world of good," said Alan Ruskin, chief international strategist at RBS Global Banking and Markets in New York. "Basically, they found that the market would applaud direct capital injections more readily than understanding the complexities of reverse auctions to buy assets, so it's a pragmatic choice."
Paulson was unapologetic, saying that by the time the rescue bill was passed on October 3, it was clear the asset purchase plan would take too long and would not be sufficient to calm roiling markets.
"I will never apologize for changing a strategy or an approach if the facts change," he said.
COOL TO CALLS FOR HELP
The $700 billion financial sector bailout is the United States' marquee effort to combat a credit crisis spawned by rising U.S. mortgage defaults that is now wreaking economic damage worldwide.
To help ease the crisis, the U.S. Treasury and bank regulators on Wednesday issued "guidance" for banks encouraging them to lend and to rein in any compensation plans that might lead executives to take excessive risks.
Earlier on Wednesday, Canada announced a plan to buy up another $41 billion in insured mortgages and other steps to try to free-up credit.
Paulson said the U.S. Treasury was duty-bound to help prevent mortgage foreclosures, but he warned that further aid would likely mean a significant government subsidy, signaling a lack of support for a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. proposal for more aggressive aid to borrowers.
The regulator for the two largest U.S. mortgage finance companies -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- unveiled a plan on Tuesday to cut payments for hundreds of thousands of homeowners behind on their payments. That plan, however, would not touch the many loans held by mortgage investors.
Paulson sidestepped questions on whether the Treasury would use bailout funds to help struggling Detroit automakers, as the industry and some lawmakers have called for.
While he said the industry was a "critical" one for the United States, he said the purpose of the program was to provide financial system stability.
He said one option would be to amend legislation to allow $25 billion already approved for efficient vehicle production to be made available more quickly.
So far, the Treasury has focused on providing capital to federally regulated banks and thrifts, but Paulson said it was looking to broaden the effort to cover financial institutions that do not have a federal bank or thrift charter.
"Although the financial system has stabilized, both banks and non-banks may well need more capital given their troubled asset holdings, projections for continued high rates of foreclosures and stagnant U.S. and world economic conditions," he said.
$700 BILLION STILL ENOUGH?
The Treasury has allocated $250 billion of the bailout funds to inject capital into banks and thrifts and it has earmarked another $40 billion to shore up AIG, leaving just $60 billion to dole out before it would have to ask Congress to release the final $350 billion.
Paulson said he had no timeline for that request, which means the decision could be left to the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on January 20.
He also signaled he would not seek to increase the overall size of the bailout fund. "I still am comfortable that, with $700 billion, we have what we need," he said.
With an aim to restoring credit for households, Paulson said the Treasury and Fed were considering setting up a program to increase liquidity for top-rated asset-backed securities, but he provided few details.
"The initial shock of abandoning TARP is hitting stocks, but the support for consumer-level lending may be a silver lining as it goes to the root of what's ailing the economy, namely personal consumption," said Brian Dolan, chief currency strategist at FOREX.com in Bedminster, New Jersey.
When You Say Nothing At All (Alison Krauss)
It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart
Without saying a word you can light up the dark
Try as I may I could never explain
What I hear when you don't say a thing
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There's a truth in your eyes sayin' you'll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you'll catch me where ever I fall
You say it best when you say nothing at all
All day long I can hear people talking out loud
But when you hold me near, you drown out the crowd
Try as they may they could never define
What's being said between your heart and mine
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There's a truth in your eyes sayin' you'll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you'll catch me where ever I fall
You say it best when you say nothing at all
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There's a truth in your eyes sayin' you'll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you'll catch me where ever I fall
You say it best when you say nothing at all
Fade Away - Olivia Ong
I just wanna say hello to you
But you’re not lookin’ my way
Like you trying to act cool
I think I lost my mind
Back there and then
Oh how I let my feelings go
You see, I know it’s just a crush
And a crush won’t ever last long
No one’s forcing it, boy
So you I’ll put aside
Thought friends we would be
Oh, boy…
*Sadly you took my smile away
Every time you look my way
It fades away
I think it’s best it stays this way
Every time you look my way
Yeah, it fades away
You just wanna say hello to me
Now the table’s turned
I’m not lookin’ your way
Don’t get it wrong
Oh, it’s twisted up
Alright let’s make this story short
You see, I know it’s just a crush
And a crush won’t ever last long
No one’s forcing it, boy
So you I’ll put aside
Thought friends we would be
Oh, boy…
Repeat *
Whao…
Why did it have to go down this way?
I’ll admit I feel you when you are near
Maybe baby we got it all wrong
Repeat * x2
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