Chinese Cannibal (食人魔)

This is a new cannibal story. Due to the apparent blocking of the word "cannibal" (食人魔) by the Chinese government and/or media, the recent news of a cannibal serial killer has taken some time to be disseminated widely. (Revisit my recent overview of cannibals here.)

According to the Washington Post, on May 27, 2012, an arrest of 56-year-old Zhang Yongming in southwestern China occurred. He was accused of killing 11 people and dismembering, burning and burying their bodies to destroy the evidence. He allegedly attacked male victims walking on the quiet road near his home in Jinning county. The word "cannibal" was not used in the American story.

Details were graphically being given elsewhere (as per the photograph above).

An article in the Daily Telegraph said it all in their headline: "China's 'Cannibal Monster' Detained."

One critical sentence, tied to the headline, was this one:

Zhang, a loner who never talked to his neighbours, had previously served almost 20 years in jail for murder and was known in the village as the "cannibal monster."

Other details emerged in the story:

The man is believed to have chopped up their bodies and sold the flesh to unsuspecting consumers.
Police made the gruesome discovery during an investigation into the disappearances of male teenagers in Yunnan province in recent years, according to reports in Hong Kong and Chinese media…
…residents…had seen green plastic bags hanging from his home, with what appeared to be white bones protruding from the top.
Hong Kong newspaper The Standard said police discovered human eyeballs preserved inside wine bottles - "like snake wine" - and pieces of what appeared to be human flesh hanging up to dry when they entered Zhang's home.
Police feared that Zhang had fed human flesh to his three dogs, while selling other parts on the market, calling it "ostrich meat"...
Cannibalism is a particularly sensitive subject in China, where it was practised as a survival tactic during periods of mass starvation, for example in the wake of a failed industrialisation drive launched in the late 1950s.
Individual cases of cannibalism were also recorded during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, when it was carried out as a symbolic act against perceived enemies of the communist cause.

New Knife Attack

Some reports are calling it the seventh recent knife attack at a school in China. Other media are saying it is the fifth attack in two months. Nevertheless, 7 kids and one teacher are reported to have died in another copycat attack there that, reportedly, ended in the suicide of the attacker.
The Times of London reported:

A knife-wielding man stabbed seven children and a teacher to death at a kindergarten in China earlier today, the latest in a string of attacks on the country’s youngest pupils.
The man wounded 20 others before killing himself. It was the fifth violent assault on schoolchildren in China in less than two months.
The attack occurred about 8am (local time) as the school day was about to start at a Nanzheng County school in northwest China’s Shaanxi province.
The killings took place despite a recent boost in security at school grounds ordered by the local government in keeping with national directives following the recent spate of attacks.

According to the BBC News, this earlier attack, also occurred:

China knife attack 'kills eight'

A Chinese man has been arrested after allegedly stabbing to death eight people, including three family members, China's official news agency said.
Police said that Zhou Yezhong killed his mother, wife, daughter, four neighbours and a migrant worker in eastern China's Jiangxi province.
He was arrested on Saturday evening, less than two hours after the attacks took place, Xinhua news agency said.

3 Days, 3 Attacks

I have pointed out that in China (and Japan), due to their strict firearms laws, such countries tend to manifest their "copycat school violence" in terms of "stabbing" series. Will this current stabbing spree spread to Japan or other Asian nations?

April 2010 appears to be turning into a prime example. The media has referred to these, very openly, as "copycats." Of course, the underlying theme of these events ending in suicides or parasuicidal incidents is no surprise for readers here.










Here's is a summary of the latest news:

Five incidents in a little over a month and three attacks in three days have left at least 9 children dead in China, all by knife-wielding older males.

1) Wang Yonglai

Friday, April 30, 2010

This attack occurred in the small village of Shangzhuang, near the city of Weifang in the northern province of Shandong. Just before eight o'clock in the morning, April 30, 2010, a man named as Wang Yonglai, a local farmer, age unknown, broke through the side door of the local pre-school, according to Xinhua, the government news agency.

Armed with a hammer and carrying a can of petrol, he struck a teacher and then lashed out at five children before he picked two up, doused himself with petrol and set himself on fire. Teachers at the school managed to grab the children from him, but Wang was reported to have died. The five victims are said to be in stable condition in the local hospital and none have life-threatening injuries.

2) Xu Yuyuan, 47

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Another attack involved a knife-wielding man stabbed 29 children at a kindergarten on Thursday in Taixing of East China's Jiangsu province. Five of the children are in critical condition and the rest are stable. No deaths had been reported as of Thursday night, said Sun Yun, deputy mayor of Taixing. Two teachers and one security guard were also injured after the 9:40 am attack. Witnesses report that he taunted onlookers, daring them to stop him as he carried out his rampage.

An initial police investigation said the suspect, 47-year-old Xu Yuyuan, was an unemployed local resident who had been fired from a local insurance company in 2001.

3) Chen Kangbing, 33

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

A mentally ill teacher on sick leave for the past four years broke into a school and wounded 18 students and a teacher in southern China’s Leizhou city in Guangdong province on April 28. The man in Wednesday's attack managed to slip into the school with a group of visiting teachers, Xinhua reported. Chen Kangbing,33, had been a teacher himself. Xinhua said he suffered from mental illness and had been on sick leave since February 2006.

4) Yang Jiaqin, 40

Monday, April 12, 2010

An attack occurred on April 12, 2010, when a man hacked to death a second grader and an elderly woman with a meat cleaver, near a school in southern Guangxi, and wounded five other people, including students. Yang Jiaqin, 40, chased his victims through Xizhen village of the southern Guangxi region not long after classes ended Monday afternoon. A 7-year-old girl and the 81-year-old woman later died.

5) Zheng Minsheng, 42

Tuesday, March 23, 2010; executed, Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Chen Kangbing attack came the same day a man was executed for stabbing eight children to death outside their elementary school last month in the southeastern city of Nanping. The attack on March 23, 2010, at around 7:20 am local time, shocked China because eight children died and the assailant had no known history of mental illness. At his trial, Zheng Minsheng, 42, said he killed because he had been upset after being jilted by a woman and treated badly by her wealthy family. He was executed by firing squad on Wednesday, April 28, just a little over a month after his crime.

2004 Attacks

These attacks have officials looking into a similar wave of knife-related violence on children that occurred in 2004. After the 2004 attack at a school in Beijing that left nine students dead, the central government ordered tighter school security nationwide. Regulations that took effect in 2006 require schools to register or inspect visitors and keep out people who have no reason to come inside.

The list of 2004 stabbings in China (which eventually spread to Japan) may be found by clicking here.

There were also stabbings in 2008, associated with the Autumn Festivals in China and Japan (see here).

Bus Rampage: China

A bus dispatcher in northern China killed nine people and injured 11 others when he hijacked a company vehicle after a feud with his boss.

The man, surnamed Zhang, got into a fight with his boss and injured him with a dagger before stealing the bus and driving away into the streets of the city of Tianjin, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The 40-year-old motored through the streets, ramming into people and killing nine bystanders, the report said.

Police dispatched dozens of police cars to the scene, and Zhang ran into three of them, injuring four policemen, before finally being caught.

Authorities were investigating the case, the report said.

Source: Monday, February 1, 2010, Geelong Advertiser, Australia.