Like disposable cigarette lighters, celebrity relationships burn bright for a couple months before running out of gas. It's not that stars are all inveterate narcissists incapable of fidelity and true love.

The reasons for the brief shelf-life of a star-studded union are many, but the pressures of the work, which often involves long hours and lots of travel, and constant media scrutiny, are right up there with the oft-cited irreconcilable differences in tearing apart made-for-TV marriages.

The public's appetite for the dirt on celebrity couples is satisfied by innumerable tabloids and unauthorized biographies, recounting in vivid if not wholly accurate detail the breakups and breakdowns of pop icons.

Some stars write their own stories in order to either "set the record straight," exact revenge on a former lover, or pull in some extra cash.

In the case of Taiwan singer and actress Annie Yi (Yi Nengjing), the motivation for writing her latest book, "Testament of Life and Death," are not so clear.

Though the author of this collection of love letters would have us believe it was a labor of love, one can't discount the possibility that Yi, 33, knew quite well such a "soul-bearing" book would keep her career from running out of gas. Yi's love songs have kept young romantics swooning for a decade, and her TV melodramas have tugged at the heartstrings of millions of sentimentalists across the straits.

The love letters in "Testament" are presumably written to her husband, rocker Harlem Yu (Yu Chengqing), making it a must-read for the celebrity couple's fans.

What makes Yi and Yu's story unique in the annals of celebrity pairings is that the couple managed to keep their relationship under wraps for over a decade. When they finally made to the altar, their on-again-off-again relationship had friends and the media voicing doubts about the longevity of the marriage.

Even by their own admission, the relationship's prognosis was iffy.

"I never thought I was marriage material because I'm a free spirit. And Harlem is very much like me: We're just not the type to settle down; he often publicly denied that we were an item. Neither of us knew how far we could take the relation-ship; we just lived life day to day. It was one specific moment, however, that bound our fate together," she says.

That moment was when Yi discovered that she had a tumor in her uterus - and was confronted with the profound life-and-death questions that a discovery like that raises.

"The moment Harlem found out I had a tumor, he proposed, and said he would marry me no matter what happened. The doctor told us that if the tumor was malignant, they would have to remove my uterus - meaning I wouldn't be able to have children. None of that deterred Harlem, and he signed my hospital form as a family member. This is all the more remarkable because three years ago, he wasn't even willing to accompany me to the emergency room when I was injured in a minor accident," she recalls.

Harlem's commitment phobia was not all that surprising: The 41-year-old is an extremely talented com-poser, lyricist and singer with a delightfully eccentric personality.

His humor, wit and affability helped make him a media darling and one of the island province's most popular TV variety show hosts - young girls swarm around him like bees to honey.

This obviously put added strains on their relationship. "I was preparing myself for a breakup," says Yi, "so I started to write about my feelings about Harlem - the book is dedicated to him as a testament to our love. It means a great deal to me, especially as we're happy together now."

The tumor was benign, and the couple now have an 8-month-old son.

"He's a good boy. He seldom makes a fuss and never cries in the wee hours of the morning like other babies," says Yi, proudly. Motherhood hasn't diminished the girlish, elfin qualities that made her a teen idol during the early 1990s.

Yi says the memoir was cathartic, an evolutionary process for the singer who, after rising to fame in the late 1980s, swiftly outgrew her audience of middle school students and began looking for mature material.

In addition to singing, she appears in movies and TV dramas, making a big splash with the role of Lu Xiaoman, one of the most important women in the life of the famous Chinese essayist-poet Xu Zhimo.

Writing became another outlet for her creativity, and she began contributing essays to a woman's monthly magazine.

Yi also wrote six tracks on her album "I'm Brave." Her first novel, "Fallen Angels," was published in Taiwan in 1990, followed by three other successful semi-autobiographical books.

"I've always been obsessed with words and characters," she says. "If someone throws away a slip of paper with words on it, my curiosity to see what it says would probably impel me to pick it up. I love to read ancient Chinese poems and appreciate the meter and meaning. They inspire me a lot in terms of my own writing and I hope my book has a similar lyrical quality," says Yi.

Her favorite book is "One Hundred Years Of Solitude," by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

It was reported that her husband was moved to tears as he read his wife's tell-all book, but Yi scoffs at the notion: "He cried? Impossible! Unless chili pepper was rubbed into his eyes! He was just surprised to discover that I loved him so much."

Like any married working woman, Yi now juggles her family and busy career.

"When you have a baby, you can't be free in the real sense of the word. Your mind and heart are forever attached to that little person. He makes me grow as a person, to be more tolerant. If the time comes when I'm asked to choose between family and career, family will always come first," she says.

(eastday.com December 16, 2002)