My Perfect Weekend with Andie Chen

Who: Singaporean actor Andie Chen, 37, is now based in Taipei with his Taiwanese actress-wife Kate Pang and their eight-year-old son Aden and six-year-old daughter Avery. Toggling between Taiwan and Singapore for work, he stars as a complicated antagonist in the new English-language drama Third Rail, about a hijacking incident on board an MRT train. He plays the leader of the hijackers. The series is available on meWatch and premieres on Channel 5 on Monday at 9.30pm.

“On non-working days, I play a bit of video games in the mornings. It’s what I turn to when I’m stressed or need an escape from worldly worries. Now, I’m playing New World, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Amazon Games. I also play Sandbox, which is a blockchain mobile game. 

Afterwards, I work out for two to three hours. Gyms are where I find happiness. I do mainly functional bodybuilding – which involves things like kettlebells, box jumps, bodyweight exercises and weights – and muay thai, which I have been doing for about four years.

At night, I spend time with my wife. We mostly watch movies and work out together. I’m going to start personal-training her though, and I’ve been designing a workout session for her.

One of the things that attracted me to Kate when we began dating was that she was one of the few people with whom I could watch arthouse films or things with less mass-market appeal. There are a lot of arthouse cinemas in Taipei and they’re quite nice. Recently, we watched Norwegian film The Worst Person In The World (2021) and really enjoyed it.

On days when the whole family is free, we have picnics in green spaces in Taipei, such as Daan Forest Park and Youth Park. We take along our pet rabbit, which we adopted two years ago, and we walk it there.

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Sometimes, we also take short trips outside of Taipei to get closer to nature. We climb mountains or visit streams and riversides. That’s one of the reasons we relocated to Taiwan – we wanted our kids to be more immersed in nature and the outdoors. We are considering a camping trip next summer.”