Back from the dead in the great romantic tradition last week came China's glamorous black-banged Butterfly Wu, the fragile cinemactress but durable adventuress, who was supposedly killed by flying shrapnel in the siege of Hong Kong last January. Wu-wooers were relieved: they had feared that a fabulously Asiatic career had ended. The Butterfly's beauty and talent had moved her on & up 1) from the studio of a maker of obscene postcards, 2) to the arms of Henry Pu-yi, stooge ruler of Manchukuo, 3) to the arms of Marshal Chang Hsüeh-liang, onetime overlord of Manchuria. 4) to the position of No. 1 cinestar in China, 5) to Episcopalian marriage to wealthy Christian Vintner Eugene Penn of Shanghai.
But Butterfly Wu now turned up safe & sound in Shiukwang, with Husband Penn, 20 relatives and friends, and a Wulu of an explanation. She had escaped Hong Kong, she said, by disguising herself and Penn as untouchable dirty beggars, and then leading eight children pitifully past the sentries. The Japs failed to examine her husband's baggage, she said; it held the family jewels, her gowns and theatrical makeup. (How the relatives got out was unexplained.) At the time she was reported dead, said Butterfly, she was actually head of a Hong Kong "Women's Club" set up by the Japs. "But that was only to fool the Japs," said she. "My loyalty to our country cannot be questioned, and I am going to show it hereafter by actions instead of words."
Meantime in Manhattan another Chinese, American-born Emily Lee Shek, showed her loyalty by topping off a special weight-making diet with two gallons of water. Thus weighing 101 lb., she became the first Chinese member of the WAACs.
In San Francisco pretty Alice Wong, a bride of three months, looked in her hope chest. She had always wanted an elaborate wedding, but her husband, a shipyard worker and a patriot, had used the money to buy war bonds. Alice Wong laid the bonds aside, stared at the pretty things in the chest. Presently she drank poison and so died.
High Life