On his whirlwind Taiwan stop, Hollywood star Tom Cruise found time to sit down for afternoon tea with pop diva Jolin Tsai, who surprised him with a homemade cake themed on “The Mummy.”
Cruise jetted in Wednesday (May 24) for a one-night, two-day visit to promote the film.
Local reporters were unable to snap a single photo of Cruise enjoying the sights, but it turns out he wasn’t spending all his free time in his hotel.
As shown in the photos Tsai posted to her Facebook page, she and Cruise shared a leisurely afternoon at Sin Hong Choon Trade’s traditional Taiwanese tea house in Dadaocheng on Wednesday.
Back in 2000, Tsai presented Cruise with a bouquet of flowers when he arrived on his first visit to Taiwan.
A fine afternoon for tea
Seventeen years later, Tsai has gone from ingenue to icon, but she was still ready to welcome Cruise to Taiwan – this time with a cake.
The singer, a devoted cake decorator, presented Cruise with a fondant creation that took her seven days to make, according to the film’s distributor, United International Pictures.
Half was a chocolate cake in the shape of an Egyptian sarcophagus and the other an exquisitely detailed monster in ancient Chinese garb.
According to United International Pictures, Cruise was so dazzled by the effort he asked three times whether she had truly baked the cake herself.
Tsai dared him to break into the sarcophagus, joking that to do so would be unleashing a curse.
Cruise was happy to do it, digging into the chocolate sarcophagus and declaring it his most dangerous stunt yet.
After a bite, he said he would need to step up his exercise regimen to stay at 6 per cent body fat, United International Pictures said in a press release.
Cruise had brought a gift of his own – a bouquet of peonies for Tsai plus a pink diary he said he had written a secret in.
The recipient said she would write her own secrets in the diary, and that the diary would become a secret between the two.
The film distributor said Cruise and Jolin had enjoyed cups of oolong tea, “knocking them back like they were tequila shots.”
