The Southern Metropolis Daily reports on the stabbing of Xu Lai. Xu Lai, who blogs with the online moniker Qianliexian (钱列宪), was listed as one of the “Twenty Most Influential Figures in China’s Cyberspace” by Southern Metropolis Weekly last year. His blog, Qianliexian Yao Fayan, is widely popular among journalists, intellectuals, and students, and is a clever, critical, and humorous collection of social and political news items, mostly on the topics of corruption and censorship. [His blog name “Qianliexian Yao Fayan” (钱列宪要发言) is a play on words: “Qianliexian” is phonetically similar to the word for “prostate.” “Fayan,” or “Inflamed” also sounds like “speak.” So the title of the blog literally means “Qianliexian Wants to Speak” but sounds like “The prostate wants to be inflamed.”] Xu was also a nominee for the best Chinese blog in the 2005 BoB award organized by Deutsche Welle. Though his blog was shut down by censors last November, he immediately reopened another blog, “Qianliexian Still Wants to Speak” on ifeng.com on November 24.
The news was first spread on Twitter. Many netizens expressed their anger and shock online, but those posts are also quickly being censored by chat-rooms, search engine and blog-hosting services. Here are some samples of such online conversations about the assault:
@hecaitou: Xu Lai doesn’t have any private enemies
@buchimifan: It won’t be the fifty-cents party, they don’t really dare to do that
@axxx it’s just like China has returned to the 1940s and what KMT did to journalists, but it’s the 21st century now.
The Southern Metropolis Daily reports is translated by Roland Soong of ESWN:
At 4:55pm, the netizen Zola flashed the news on twitter: “Gu Jianlong called: Qian Liexian is lying on the ground holding his stomach. I asked them to help him stop the bleeding, stay calm and relax his breathing in order to increase his chances of survival.” “There is no danger of losing his life. He was stabbed just once. Guo Jianlong and Xu Lai’s wife are going along to the hospital. The wound is about the size of a palm. There had been quite a bit of bleeding. He is emotionally stable and is in the process of going to the hospital.”
In a photo from another famous blogger Hecaitou, Xu Lai is seen lying on the ground and holding his stomach. At the time, someone heard the perpetrator tell Xu Lai: “You know better not to offend people the next time?” Hecaitou said that Xu Lai is a low-keyed person and just a science reporter who couldn’t possibly have offended others in his work. But his blog has a lot of contents that are somewhat provocative. Therefore the enmity may have come from his blog.
Oiwan Lam of Global Voices also reports:
Many bloggers are outraged by such violence and express their anger at twitter:
txxx retweeted by axxx (message protected):
天呐，徐来被刺。这难道还是闻一多的时代吗？
My god, Xu Lai was being stabbed, are we living in Wen Yiduo’s era. (Translator note: Wen is a poet and an activist in May 4 movement, he was assassinated by Kuomintang in 1945 after a public talk.)
Xu Lai, photo source is here.
Blogger friends went to the hospital and took photo at the emergency room.
Twitter statuses and Qianliexian’s blog (updated by a friend) report that the surgery is complete and that he is currently resting.
