This past weekend saw a knife drawn in one of China’s top shopping malls here in Nanjing. The reason? An argument between a boyfriend and girlfriend that would see the young lady soon in hospital with multiple stab wounds.
On Saturday, 27 November, the couple were in Deji Plaza when they got into an argument. The boyfriend then produced a fruit knife and slashed his girlfriend several times in the face and back.
The lady was taken to hospital where it is said her injuries are not life threatening. Police later revealed the boyfriend to be surnamed Feng, age 23, from the city of Huai’an in central Jiangsu Province, reports The Paper. The case is under investigation.
With guns next to impossible to come by in China, knives are more often than not the only resort for those determined to cause physical harm. While incidents are perhaps not daily occurrences, 2018 in particular was a bumper year for stabbings in our part of China.
In August, along Shanghai’s famous Nanjing Xi Lu, two staff members of a coffee shop got into an argument with a customer. The 45-year-old male picked up a foldable fruit knife, which he used to attack the two male workers.
The following month, here in Nanjing, a man who had trapped himself in his own car violently lashed out at police when they approached the vehicle. The assailant slashed an officer from Ninghai Lu police station across the throat, just missing a main artery.
That same month, in the city of Hangzhou, a couple walked through a local park appearing to all around like anyone else. But then a quarrel erupted at which point the man produced a knife and stabbed the woman 40 to 50 times. She died on the spot.
Much more recently, earlier this year saw a 25-year-old unemployed male go on a stabbing spree in the city of Anqing, not so far from Nanjing in Anhui Province. Six people were left dead and a further 14 injured as a result of the young man’s motives which were said to be anger due to his family’s disobedience and pessimism.
Knives have also been known to be the weapon of choice for wives seeking to inflict bodily harm on the mistresses of their philandering husbands.
It was also in 2018 that a 25-year-old wife in the nearby city of Changzhou became enraged upon learning that her husband was having an affair with a woman 4 years her elder. The wife confronted the mistress, declaring her intention to disfigure her.
After repeatedly slapping the mistress, the wife drew a knife and left a 8cm-long gash from eyebrow to mouth. The mistress fought back, after which the husband, also on the scene and wishing to stop the fight, stabbed himself in the throat, slicing open his trachea.
China is blessed with some of the strictest gun laws in the world, meaning that incidents involving firearms are very rare occurrences indeed. But this past weekend’s stabbing nevertheless reminds us that an altercation of any kind is more than likely not worth it.
