HONG KONG — An American college instructor has given the first personal account of a stabbing attack in China that injured him and several others.
David Zabner said he and three colleagues from Cornell College, a private liberal arts college in Mount Vernon, Iowa, were leaving a public park in the northeastern Chinese city in Jilin on Monday when he heard a scream.
“I turned around to see a man brandishing a knife at me. I didn’t immediately realize that that was what was happening, I thought that my co-workers had been pushed,” Zabner told Iowa Public Radio from a hospital in Jilin.
“Then I looked down at my shoulder and realized, ‘I’m bleeding, I’ve been stabbed.’”
Police in Jilin said Tuesday that a man surnamed Cui, 55, had been arrested Monday in connection with the attack. They said he had “collided with a foreign national” while walking in Beishan Park, stabbing four foreign nationals in total as well as a Chinese national who tried to stop him.
“Police told us that he was unemployed and down on his luck, and that somebody in our group bumped into the man,” Zabner said. “And he decided to respond in the way he responded.”
None of the victims had life-threatening injuries, the police said. Zabner said he was stabbed in the arm six inches below his shoulder, and that paramedics arrived after about 20 minutes.
U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said Tuesday that three U.S. citizens and a non-citizen resident of Iowa had been stabbed, and that a U.S. consular official had visited all four at the hospital in Jilin.
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, said she had spoken with Zabner’s family in Iowa City, which is part of her district. She said Zabner was “doing well, probably able to travel and come back to the United States,” while the other two Americans were in more critical condition after undergoing surgery.
“They’re in intensive care, but they’re stable and talking with their family members,” she told NBC News.
The instructors were in China as part of a joint program with Beihua University that was established in 2018. Zabner, a graduate student at Tufts University who is an alumnus of Cornell College, had previously participated in the program in November 2019, when he taught computer science courses.
“I was really excited to get to see it in the summer,” he said of Jilin, where the winters are bitterly cold.
On Monday, which was a public holiday in China, Zabner and his colleagues had decided to visit Beishan Park, a hilly green space in central Jilin that is home to several ancient temples.
“It’s got a great view of the city from the top,” he said.
Violent crime against foreigners is rare in China, which has some of the world’s strictest gun control laws. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the attack appeared to be an isolated incident and that it remained under investigation.
Chinese state media had initially been silent on the attack, discussion of which also appeared to be tightly controlled on China’s heavily censored social media. It comes as the U.S. and China are trying to improve relations, including people-to-people exchanges.
Some online commenters expressed concern about how it might affect China’s reputation.
“There are many videos online about how ‘safe China is,’ and now this beautiful image of China has been ruined by that attacker,” said one user on social media platform Weibo.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Tuesday that the stabbing attack would not affect the normal conduct of U.S.-China cultural exchanges.
“China is recognized as one of the safest countries in the world,” he said. “China has always and will continue to take effective measures to ensure the safety of all foreigners in the country.”
