MELODY CHU MEI-FENG looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Dressed in a pink plaid shirt, white Capri pants and with her freshly cropped hair tucked behind her ears, the petite Taiwanese politician-turned-singer is unfazed as a phalanx of photographers scrambles to capture her youthful face in the offices of a Hong Kong concert promoter.
Chu has seen it all before. Since she found herself at the centre of one of the region's biggest sex scandals last December, the 36-year-old has had her body and soul laid bare before the media many times. She looks more like a shy schoolgirl than a sex siren, but her reputation precedes her.
Her life changed dramatically when Chu, former Director of Cultural Affairs in the northern city of Hsinchu, was secretly filmed in her apartment having sex with a married man - one of many affairs she was alleged to have had with influential or wealthy figures. A 40-minute VCD showing the bedroom romp was distributed free with Taiwan's tabloid magazine Scoop Weekly. Although the Government ordered the disc be withdrawn from news-stands, illegal copies spread across the nation and found their way on to the Internet.
In late January, Chu had become the No 1 search subject by Web surfers worldwide, according to search engine Terra Lycos, which admitted amazement at the level of interest. Like one of Taiwan's earthquakes, the aftershocks are being felt long after the seismic rumble.
'Suddenly I became transparent and totally exposed in public eyes. No matter how much clothing I wrap myself up in, I am still naked. I wanted to dig a hole and hide,' Chu writes in the preface of a book, Confessions Of Chu Mei-feng, she penned in response to the affair.
Rather than shy away from the controversy, Chu came out fighting. First the book, in which she detailed her many love affairs - including those with Tseng Chung-ming, with whom she was filmed in flagrante, and her ex-boyfriend former Hsinchu mayor Tsai Jen-chien, 49, the alleged mastermind behind the sex video - became a best-seller.