HONG KONG — An American university lecturer has spoken for the first time about his experience during a stabbing attack in China that left him and several others injured.
David Zubner said he and three colleagues from Cornell University, a private liberal arts college in Mount Vernon, Iowa, were emerging from a park in the city in northeastern China’s Jilin province on Monday when they heard the screams.
“I turned around and saw a man brandishing a knife at me. I didn’t immediately realize what it was and just assumed my coworker had been pushed,” Zabner told Iowa Public Radio from a hospital in Jilin province.
“Then I looked down at my shoulder and realized, ‘I’m bleeding, I’ve been stabbed.'”
Police in Jilin province announced on Tuesday that they had arrested a 55-year-old man surnamed Cui in connection with the attack on Monday. Police said the man “clashed with foreigners” while walking in Beishan Park, stabbing a total of four foreigners and a Chinese national who tried to stop him.
“The police said he was unemployed and down on his luck, but someone in our group bumped into the guy,” Zabner said, “and he decided to react that way.”
All of the victims suffered non-life-threatening injuries, police said. Zabner was stabbed in the arm six inches below the shoulder, and paramedics didn’t arrive on the scene until about 20 minutes later.
U.S. Consul General Sarah Yun visited the injured instructors – three U.S. citizens and one non-citizen instructor living in Iowa – at a hospital in Jilin province on Wednesday and said she was “impressed by their resilience.”
“The staff at the U.S. Consulate General in Shenyang will continue to do everything in our power to ensure they receive the assistance they need to recover and return home to Iowa as quickly as possible,” she said in a statement.
Republican Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks said she had spoken with Zabner’s family in her Iowa City district and that Zabner was “doing fine and will likely be able to travel back to the United States,” while the two other Americans were in more critical condition after undergoing surgery.
“They are in intensive care but in stable condition and we have spoken with the family,” she told NBC News.
The instructors were in China as part of a collaborative program with Beihua University established in 2018. Zabner, a Cornell alumnus and Tufts graduate student, participated in the program in November 2019 when he taught a computer science course.
“I was really excited to see it in the summer,” he said of Jilin province, which gets frigid in the winter.
On Monday, which was a national holiday in China, Zabner and his colleagues decided to visit Beishan Park, a hilly green space in central Jilin province that is home to several ancient temples.
“There’s a great view of the city from the top,” he said.
China has some of the world’s strictest gun control laws and violent crimes against foreigners are rare. China’s foreign ministry said Tuesday that the attack appeared to be an isolated incident and was under investigation.
Chinese state media was initially silent about the attack, and discussion of it appears to have been tightly controlled even on China’s heavily censored social media. This comes as the United States and China are trying to improve relations, including people-to-people exchanges.
Some online comments expressed concern about how this would affect China’s reputation.
“There are many videos online saying ‘China is safe’ but this beautiful image of China has been ruined by this attacker,” said one user on the social media platform Weibo.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said Tuesday that the stabbing incident would not affect the normal operation of U.S.-China cultural exchanges.
“China is recognized as one of the safest countries in the world,” he said. “China has been and will continue to take effective measures to ensure the safety of all foreigners in the country.”
