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Interview: Coco Zhao, from jazz to M. Butterfly
Cinematheque: Mulan is finally Chinese again! (and other film news)
On Wednesday night, a Virginia Tech (维吉尼亚理工大学) graduate student from Beijing was decapitated in a cafe on the campus of the university. Yang Xin, 22-years-old, was starting her first semester as an accounting graduate student. She had only been on the campus for 13 days.
The accused is a fellow graduate student from China, a Ningbo native named Zhu Haiyang. He has been charged with first-degree murder and is currently under police custody.
Details about the the motive for the gruesome crime are scant at the moment. The fact that the victim and the suspect knew each other has been corroborated by preliminary eyewitness accounts that state that the two students were having dinner together at the cafe when the suspect suddenly pulling out a knife and decapitated the victim.
Police revealed that Yang had listed Zhu as her emergency contact with the school, suggesting some prior relationship. It could have also been because Zhu, a doctoral student in agricultural and applied economics, had been the first to assist her in adjusting to life at VTech - a normal tradition amongst the 500 or so Chinese students there.
But what led to the attack is still a mystery: The two had not been arguing and nobody could point to previous signs of trouble between them.
After Zhu's arrest, the campus alert system, put in place after the shootings by Korean-American student Seung-Hui Cho in 2007, sent out safety notifications to about 30,000 subscribers in the area.
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Decapitated? In public?
Yes, that is correct.
He must have been pretty quick with that knife, and big knife at that. If there wasn't a fight, he probably had the attack planned.
Zhu Haiyang graduated from Shanghai Ocean University.
Here is an article about his academic success on the student newspaper
http://www.shfu.edu.cn/news/news_detail.asp?ID=4811
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&u=http://www.shfu.edu.cn/news/news_detail.asp%3FID%3D4811&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=6&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3D%25E6%259C%25B1%25E6%25B5%25B7%25E6%25B4%258B%25E5%2590%258C%25E5%25AD%25A6%25E7%25AE%2580%25E4%25BB%258B%2B%25E6%259C%25B1%25E6%25B5%25B7%25E6%25B4%258B%25E5%2590%258C%25E5%25AD%25A6%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3DcNF
Here is his blog on QQ
http://8196344.qzone.qq.com/
Another blog on that's metro.
http://home.thatsmetro.com/104
Please...let's not lose our heads over this incident. I'm sure the accused merely blew his stack and got a bit nationalistic when the victim urged calmer heads prevail about the Tibet issue.
Don't be such a dick
Wow, how do you in 13 days piss someone off so much that he cuts off your head with a kitchen knife during a chat in a cafe?
This is some sad, scary shit.
Not to be all "cowboy-up," but if reports are true, I find it difficult to believe none of the 7 witnesses attempted to intervene in any way ("Chief Flinchum told reporters that to the best of his knowledge, no one intervened during the attack, and there were approximately seven witnesses").
Sure, in a moment, what their witnessing is shocking and wildly dangerous--but more than not, this is the kind of shock that compels people to act as apposed to standing frozen in fear.
A knife wielding maniac is fair game for just about any type of bystander action, doled out with impunity: chair over the head, pelting with coffee mugs, dousing with hot coffee, butter knife in the kidney.
To witness this was surely unbearable, but to witness it and know you did absolutely nothing--whether justified or not--would be equally unbearable, and something you'd have to hauntingly live with.
Of course, what I'm saying is completely objective (based on my American social construct), but we've all bore witness in one form or another to life threatening incidences where bystanders 'acted' and saved lives--occasionally, even at the cost of their own life.
Anyway, this story is a total bummer.
Witnesses were probably Chinese liu xue sheng...
It's easy to say after-the-fact how someone should have reacted. I can see the oddness and shock of the situation making people hesitate or even fail to realize what was going on until it was over.
Geez, I mean completely "subjective".
I know you are all about being heroes and everything, but these are people sitting in a cafe when suddenly someone next to them just cuts another persons fucking head off!! Can you imagine the amount of blood that produces? After the first cut it's probably too late to help any way..
What's up with chinese decapitating people in north america? First that dude on the bus in Canada, and now this ! Funniest thing is, as soon as I just read the headline, I knew it was another chinese. I don't know what's up, but there's obviously more than meets the eye.
yb girl,
--"as soon as I just read the headline, I knew it was another chinese"?
but i was little bit different. as soon as i just read the heading, i was sure the suspect must'v used a rambo knife to make himself more outstanding than a yank in a gangland which enjoys such a highest crime rate that a kitch knife cutting off an ear would not make a story.
If only InactionHero had been there... dousing the assailants groin with hot coffee or forcing a Snickers bar up his ass
To act is certainly one’s choice. In this situation, no one would ever be condemned for not acting. I’m just genuinely surprised that no one did, given we Americans’ propensity for “being heroes and everything.” And Bumix’s assertion that, “After the first cut it's probably too late to help any way”…well, that simply speaks to another point of view of courageously intervening to save a life.
I worked as an EMT for 2 years, saving people's lives on a daily basis. It's all very exciting in the beginning, but the first thing your colleagues tell you is to not try to be a hero, because it makes you do stupid things, probably endanger yourself and those around you.
For every hero story there's another one where somebody stupid got himself killed.
Nice, Jimmy Page, you chastise LoveChinaLongTime to “don't be such a dick,” only to be a dick yourself, which is the blog commenter avenue of choice when bereft of anything insightful to contribute to a topic.
Decapitated.
In public.
I though LCLT was being direspectful, that's why I called him a dick. I mocked you because I thought your comment was ridiculous.
How can you criticize 18-22 year old kids for NOT stopping a particularly savage and disturbing murder from taking place? If somebody had stepped in and saved the girls life, I would have called it an act of sheer heroism - but I think it sucks to judge those present for not taking on an armed lunatic with coffee cups and butter knives.
I wasn't trying to be particularly insightful, I hope you weren't.
But most importantly - This IS some sad, scary shit
Thought of the Day: What would InactionHero do? Would he have been the Inaction Hero or the In Action Hero?
Ok, Jimmy Page, I understand your 18-22 point of view. Still, we might not expect it, but there are lots of young people who do heroic things.
What's more, in stating that if someone had stepped in and and saved the girl's life, you would have "called it an act of sheer heroism," implies that you hold doing something to intervene as plausible.
It might take some serious balls, but often in crisis situations, people 'just act.'
Lastly, before 'mocking' me, please read the posts for what they actually say.
"To act is certainly one’s choice. In this situation, no one would ever be condemned for not acting."
I'm not criticizing or judging, I'm wondering why 'no one', according to the reports, did anything? It's a genuine, albeit frustrating, point of curiosity, not condemnation.
There's a lot of bad ways to go out in life, but having your head cut off--in coffee shop or in front of a video camera (Daniel Pearl)--has to be right up there.
@yb
"Funniest thing is, as soon as I just read the headline, I knew it was another chinese."
Puhlease ... that's as naive as saying "Funniest thing is, as soon as I just read the deadline, I knew it happened in America."
According to the reports, the attack happened so quickly, none of the other patrons in the restaurant could stop the attack.
What is it about Virginia Tech that makes Asians go postal there?
Must be the crappy Chinese food at the cafeteria.
I guess that's one school where you won't find racist bullying of the Asians any time soon.
Scenario A:
White dude to Asian dude: Yo, you got something in your eye...
Asian dude: WTF! Are you making fun of my eyes???
White dude: Nah man...I was just trying to tell ya got..
Asian dude: Muddafu...! Where's my Glock?...
I didn't actually see anywhere that said no one intervened.... They may have intervened too late. If there was no argument, no one would even know they had to react until blood was drawn and she would have been dead within a few seconds.
It's pretty asinine to pretend like you know what happened and try to speak about the students there.
Ok, I admit to being mildly obsessed with this story. It's obviously a lover's quarrel, she wanted to leave and date white guys, who knows?, just not HIM anymore and he couldn't take it, so at their last meeting at the cafe he has a sharpened piece of cutlery. If the knife is really sharp he could shove her head under his arm and before anyone could realized it he could have been done in 45 seconds. But what bothers me is that they were BOTH phd candidates, all that education, and the fact he would do it THERE and be unrepentant about it. And on the same night as that Belgian daycare murder by a Heath Ledger Joker look-alike.
Imagine, you're sitting there, talking to this soon to be ex-boyfiend, he's still cute, but you want to play the field in America, especially with that new T.A. you just met in your accounting class, and the next moment...
They say, as far back as the Fr. Revolution, a head might live for a minute without it's body...
O.K. I'll stop now, this is getting ... unhealthy.
Yeah, hopefully he looked into her eyes after her head hit the ground. I've heard that if you do that you are mentally screwed for life.
www.workingmannews.com
WE HAVE COMPLETE COVERAGE!
we even link his qzone blogs!
we are americans and both my husband and i have intervened in serious confrontations.
american men are not usually afraid of breaking up fights especially southern men.
what we can't understand is why au bon pain didn't have security!
there seems to be a news blackout. where are the 911 tapes? where is the autopsy report? where is the security surveilance tape?
here in california if you buy a cup of coffee you are video taped in 10 different angles.
please stop by our website!
I think we are still missing the point, why are Asian students going psycho at Virginia Tech? How many more times can this occur and reinforce the pattern before somebody gets pro-active about it?