It looks like the world's not going to end for singer Leo Ku, who has been dogged by rumors that he secretly got married to his assistant Lorraine in Fiji seven years ago.

On Sunday, after completing a series of three concerts, dubbed Amazing World, reporters asked Ku if he was going to get married soon.

Previously, he had said that he would only get married if the world does not end in 2012 - referring to the supposed concluding date of the 5,125-year-long cycle of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar when, gossip has it, life as we know it is no more.

On this occasion, the 39-year-old singer said he would be considering marriage next year and then thanked Lorraine for sticking with him.

However, Ku's recording company is still denying the marriage rumor, convinced, even though the world might end, that they will sell more records if his marital relations are kept a secret.

Another star well known for being secretive about romantic liaisons is Jay Chou, who appears to be moving ever closer to walking down the aisle with Hannah Quinlivan.

The 18-year-old model, 14 years younger than the King of Mandarin Pop, has reportedly converted to Christianity in a desperate bid to curry favor with Chou's mom, a devout god squadder.

Earlier this week the three of them were pictured enjoying a holiday sojourn in Tokyo; and at a recent concert in Singapore, Chou asked fans if they would still buy his records if he was married, or words to that effect. They answered in the affirmative.

This has been a popular mode of revealing marriage plans, or the fact a star is already married, since Andy Lau did the same before it was revealed he had wed Carol Chu.

Elsewhere, Cecilia Cheung got paid 400,000 yuan ($62,715) for a 30-minute appearance at a wedding, according to website news.67.

This seems a bit rich considering she has just got divorced from Hong Kong's best paid TV actor Nicholas Tse, recently signed up for six movies that will bring her an estimated HK$75 million ($9.6 million), and produced a single whose copyright was sold for more than 10 million yuan ($1.6 million).

Netizens jumped on this latest example of Cheung's love of money above all other things, but the Hong Kong actress countered by saying she was just attending a friend's wedding.

The point is, perhaps, she should have been giving her friend a gift or money, not taking it - if she did.

Another star with image problems is Zhang Ziyi, who according to a Sohu report, nearly committed suicide when her career hit a low point.

The actress said she had prepared a bottle of sleeping pills and suicide note, but was saved by the fact her TV was on and it was showing a film about 1930s film legend Ruan Lingyu, who killed herself at the age of 24.

It gave her courage to carry on, Zhang was quoted as saying.