“This was 1990 and the United States did not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.”, In 1989, Richard Marx visit to Taiwan.
"As [guitarist] Paul [Warren] and I (Richard Marx) sat in the restaurant, a group of a dozen armed men with machine guns arrived and approached the clerks at the front desk, demanding to know where I and my entourage were.
from his upcoming memoir, [Stories to Tell]
In the chapter, “The Tale of Taipei,” Marx recounts his adventures
Not a musician. One of the Marx brothers. 
They a little confused aren’t they? Taiwan is part of SE Asia?
Sure sounds like a story from Burma or the Philippines!
I’m quite surprised that sort of thing was still going down in 1990. I wonder how much of Taiwan’s new-found prosperity was, in fact, driven by mafia interests?
Martial law ended ~1989. Were people running amok with machine guns in those days?
How does a musician from the USA recognize a machine gun in Asia?
What kind of machine gun? Did the guns look like those old bank robber ones in the movies or what?
Maybe paintball guns that look like the real thing.
Sounds like a story from Philippines including the hotel description.
Reminds me a bit of the Beatles’ experience getting roughed up in the Philippines, which prompted peacenik John Lennon to comment afterwards that, if he had an atomic bomb, he’d drop it on the Philippines.
I suspect by ‘machine guns’ he means an Uzi-type weapon, or whatever the equivalent might have been in Taiwan at the time. Such things are quite widely available in Asia generally. But yeah, not implausible that they were just paintball guns or replicas; they can look very realistic.
He was Right Here Waiting for gangsters?
(1647) Richard Marx - Right Here Waiting (Official Music Video) - YouTube
Cheeseball music–bet the gangsters wanted to steal his hair for a wig.
He probably went to Thailand and got a little confused about the location…
Publisher, on reviewing his first draft manuscript: “It’s just a little boring. We need to spice it up a little bit.”
Didn’t he do more concerts after this supposed gun experience in Taiwan?
Would you? Would your management? Would ANYONE?
Sounds like total or at least exaggerated bullshit.
Maybe they were drugged up or whoever remembers the story was drugged up.
From the late 80s to the early 90s, plenty of the media and entertainment industry were controlled by mobsters.
Mob bosses like Yang Deng-kui (楊登魁), Hsu An-jin (許安進) and many more owned news media, television channels, record companies, and so on.
That was also the era when mobsters would go into hotels and kidnap professional baseball players at gun point to eat at fancy restaurants and told to fix the game, including foreign players.
Don August wrote about his experiences on Twitter.
None of which ever gets reported on the news.
So if Richard Marx’s story is true, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I want to know this history.
I know people closely in entertainment businesses and no one mentioned this.
The most famous mob boss with the surname Chen was probably Chen Chi-li (陳啟禮). He was the one responsible for assassinating the Jiang-nan, the author of a Chiang Ching-kuo biography, and an US citizen, on US soil. He was sent by the KMT but after he and his men were arrested, the KMT denied being involved. Zhang Anle, who is often referred to as White Wolf on the news was at that time the 4th member of the assassination team, but he escaped capture. In order to save his boss, he started giving speeches in the US saying they were sent by the KMT in order to save Chen’s life.
Chen’s son, River Chen, right now is an actor as well.
That’s him playing a gangster…
If this thing happened sometime in 1989 to 1990, then at that time this is the biggest boss with Chen as his last name.
He was in charge of the Four Seas Gang at the time.
I’d like to see a record of Richard Marx concert history from ~1988 to ~1992.
Not much Googly-info about him in Asia other than Japan in maybe 1990.
This is crowd sourced I think and not definitive, but it’s something
What hotel could this be? Grand Hotel? Regent? Was it even in Taipei or what city?
Was it common for hotels staff to be threatened with guns? And how do they know what was happening at the front desk off this “gigantic” hotel?
What is this bullshit? Oh yes let’s just contact a private security firm in a country where few people speak English and it’s even hard for a foreigner to find a taxi or restaurant if you don’t know how. I’m guessing they met some ex-military drunks later at a bar (combat zone?) 
and everyone made a good drunk talking story about it.
http://www.simonlan.idv.tw/?p=277
在尋找上述歷史遺跡時，同時翻到這張，勾起不爽的回憶。
1990年5月5日，17年前的一個下雨天，一夥人蹺課去看演唱會，
冒雨在場外排了好幾個小時的隊，總算盼到入場，
一進去，場地全是爛泥巴就算了，接下來又淋雨等了好幾個小時，
等到過了預定開演時間仍然沒有動靜，等到大家失去耐心開始鼓躁，
結果竟然宣佈取消！真是有夠倒楣！在現場聽工作人員廣播說可以退票，
既然可以退票，誰還會呆呆站在那兒淋雨？
當然是趕快回家啦，沒想到回家一打開電視，
竟然說什麼要在現場指定地點拿到證明才可以退票？！
真是馬德里不可思議，
那個什麼莫名其妙的證明，
難道會比我手上的購票票根更有證據力？
如果真有誠意要退錢，
我有票根不就是我花了錢買門票的最好證明嗎？至於那場演唱會臨時取消的原因，到現在還是羅生門，
官方說法是天雨導致舞台漏電，
也有人說是Richard Marx心情不好耍大牌拒唱，
不管怎樣，這三張票價值999*3=2997元，利息就免算了，
柯賜海說：「馬英九，還我牛！」
我想說：「瑪爾克斯，還我錢！」
剛才查了一下，天王唱片已經不在了，大概也不會有人還我們公道了吧，唉…
My rough translation:
While going down memory lane, I found this ticket that invoked a piece of unpleasant memory.
17 years ago, on a rainy day, May 5 1990, a group of us skipped school to watch a concert. After braving the rain for hours, we finally got to enter the stadium. However, not only was the floor full of mud, we then stood there in the rain for hours. The audience waited past the starting time, and nothing was going on stage, and we still waited until everyone lost our patience, that’s when they finally announce the concert is cancelled. What shitty luck.
They announced that we can get our money back over the speakers, and everyone went home. To our shock, when we turned on the TV, the news said you can only get refunded if you went to this office at the stadium to get a piece of paper to prove you were there.
What utter bullshit. What could have proven that I was at the stadium more than the concert ticket in my hand?
…
These three tickets costed me 2,997 NTD, Richard Marx, gimme my money back.
That collaborated with most of the story that happened outside the hotel. I’m guessing when the fans were waiting for an announcement past the starting time, that’s when Richard Marx was running for his life in the hotel.
The organizer was called Tianwang records (天王唱片), which was sold to PolyGram in the early 90s. If we can figure out who owned Tianwang records, maybe we’d figure out who Mr. Chen is.
By the way, in the 1990s, baseball fans would frequently trash a baseball stadium when there’s a rain out. That was just what Taiwanese people were like back then.
Also, it’s so unfortunate that the concert was named after that Right Here Waiting song… Those fans really waited.
It ended on Taiwan proper in 1987, although other restrictions remained in place. Outlying islands didn’t get out of jail until the 1990s.
Guy
I’m with @hansioux . The 1990s in Taiwan were a wild and woolly time—kidnappings, ransom attempts, you name it.
Guy
