"Dew Wife"

"Dew Wife"

No dictionary do readers of average U. S. newspapers need for such journalistic jargon as sugar daddy, love nest, heart balm, torch murder. But last week the epigrammarians who write U. S. head lines were confronted by a phrase which even they could not grasp without assistance.

The phrase was "dew wife." It came to light in Manhattan's Chinatown, in a subtle feud between two newspapers, the Chinese Nationalist Daily News and the Chinese Journal. The feud was aggravated some months ago when the Nationalist flayed the Journal for publishing advertisements of Japanese goods. The Journal, edited by Communist Thomas P. Chan, replied by flaying the Nationalist for disrupting a Communist Chinatown meeting with well-aimed, overripe bananas and large juicy watermelons. Aggravation was not due merely to criticism of the raid, of which the Nationalist was most proud. But the Journal editorial referred to Li Chi Ming, wife of Nationalist Editor Chen Po, as a "dew wife."

The insulting quality of the phrase could be gauged from the rage of Mrs. Chen, who called on Editor Chan to be rate him; and from the actions, a day or so later, of eight stalwart Chinamen who visited Editor Chan's office and overturned typewriters, upset tables, smashed chairs, moved Editor Chan to swear out a war rant for Mrs. Chen's arrest.

Mrs. Chen Po, young, pert, Sorbonne-educated, happily-married, explained what "dew wife" means to a Chinawoman, as follows: "Dew only exists in the early morning. . . . Dew, therefore, in Chinese sense, means changeableness, unreliableness and temporariness." Poetic though it sounds, calling a lady a "dew wife" is thus tantamount to hinting that her husband is a cuckold.