Chu Mei-feng
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Chu Mei-feng, (璩美鳳 pinyin: Qú Měifèng b. August 5, 1966), Taiwanese politician, is a former Taipei City councilwoman and the former director of Hsinchu City's Bureau of Cultural Affairs. However she is best known for her sex scandal in 2001.
Chu was born in Wanhua District, Taipei City and graduated from prestigious Taipei First Girls' High School and National Chengchi University with a bachelor degree in Chinese literature. After leaving school, Chu worked as a TV journalist for several years before she was elected as Taipei City councilwoman in 1994 under New Party (NP)'s nomination. She gained publicity and has long been noted for her outspokenness, sharp-wittedness, and beauty: in 1995, while fresh in Taipei City Council, she donated a Republic of China's National Flag to then Taipei Mayor Chen Shui-bian inside the Council, challanging Chen that "whether Mayor Chen admits the existence of Republic of China or not". In October 1996 Chu held a press conference which deeply depressed Frank Hsieh who just lost in the 1996 ROC presidential election: Chu claimed Hsieh and his wife received 20 million NT$ of donation from a notorious local psychic as well as followed him for long time. Although Hsieh finally won in the following lawsuits, this event still harmed Hsieh greatly (later in 2001 when Chu was involved in sex scandal, some Pan-Green supporters considered this scandal as a nemesis against Chu). In 1999 a local survey listed Chu among the 3 Taiwanese female politicians who Taiwanese males wanted to see them nude the most, the other 2 being Sisy Chen and Chiu I-Ying(邱議瑩).
After her 4-year tenure in Taipei City Council ended in 1998, Chu sought for re-election but NP did not nominate her because of her controversial image. Fortunately, her boyfriend at that time was then Hsinchu Mayor Tsai Jen-chien(蔡仁堅), and Tsai offered her the post at Hsinchu City Government as previously mentioned until early 2001 when they broke up. In the lower half of 2001 Chu campaigned under NP for election to the Legislative Yuan's Taichung City electoral district and was seen as a threat to the incumbent Shen Chih-hui(沈智慧), despite a string of high-profile relationships with Tsai Jen-chien, who was ten years older than she and a member of the rival Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Chu finally lost in this campaign.
Shortly after this defeat, On December 17, 2001, local magazine Scoop Weekly(獨家報導) published a lengthy story about Chu's alleged promiscuity and distributed a video CD secretly taken with a pinhole camera, purportedly showing Chu having sex with a married man. This video caused an immediate sensation and was soon spread throughout the world via internet. Chu sued Scoop Weekly for libel on December 31, 2001. The magazines in question were pulled from the market as a result, but not before several thousand copies were sold. The video soon found its way onto the Internet: search engine Lycos reported her name was among the most searched terms in January 2002.
This pinhole camera was later confirmed to be installed by Kuo Yu-ling(郭玉鈴), a vicious friend of Chu. In August 2001 when Chu traveled to USA for 2 weeks Chu asked Kuo to take care of her apartment, but Kuo took this chance to install camera in Chu's bedroom so as to possibly threaten or blackmail Chu later. Kuo later sold this camera's output to Scoop Weekly in October 2001 for an unrevealed amount of money. In March 2006 Taiwan's Supreme Court finally sentenced Kuo to 56 months in jail, while the lawsuits against Scoop Weekly are still during process.
The married man inside this video is 1970-born dot-com businessman Tseng Chung-ming(曾仲銘), who holds bachelor and master degree both from National Chiao Tung University. In Summer 2001 Tseng's company won the bid of maintaining the website of Hsinchu City's Bureau of Cultural Affairs, and therefore he had affair with Chu. After this scandal broke out, Tseng immediately gained nation-wide notoriety and his marriage was endangered. However in February 2002 Tseng's wife, a local dress designer, addressed publicly that she had opted to forgive her husband, and would neither divorce nor sue Chu for adultery. The next year, in 2003, Tseng once again became spotlighted when he was suspected infected with SARS. Fortunately he was finally tested negative and recovered from the illness. His dot-com company also closed down after this scandal; currently he is rumored to be working in mobile phone industry.
After this scandal, Chu described herself as "a woman with no face at all". In 2002 Chu secluded herself in Singapore and China; meantime she was rumored to have been engaged with a Chinese man but they soon broke up, and her application to Fudan University's Ph.D. program was also rejected. Since 2003 Chu has been staying in United Kingdom and almost cut off all relationships with Taiwan. In March 2006 Taiwan's AppleDaily reported Chu married a Chinese man in United Kingdom and is pregnant for several months, but Chu's family in Taiwan refused to confirm these things.