On May 26th, a tragic incident occurred at the First Senior High School in Taikang County, Zhoukou City, Henan Province, where a senior high school student fatally stabbed his homeroom teacher. The student also sustained injuries during the altercation and is currently undergoing treatment at a hospital in Zhengzhou. Chinese authorities have imposed a complete censorship on this news.
A parent of a student at the school, named Wang Yun, recounted the sequence of events to a reporter from the Epoch Times.
Wang Yun’s child is currently in the third year of high school and was in the same class as the perpetrator. Just a few days away from taking the college entrance exam, Wang Yun described the assailant as Wan Yunlong and the teacher as Yang Decai, a 49-year-old Chinese language teacher whom the students adored. Wang Yun mentioned that Yang was very caring and responsible, often going the extra mile to provide students with printed test papers from online sources.
According to Wang Yun, the high school has over a hundred classes, and all students reside on campus. It was a school rule for students to hand over their phones to the homeroom teacher on Mondays and receive them back on weekends. Wan Yunlong frequently disobeyed this rule and was considered as one of the most disobedient students in the class. Prior to the incident, Wan Yunlong’s aunt even reminded Yang via group chat to collect Wan Yunlong’s phone, suspecting he might have forgotten the rule.
Wang Yun disclosed that the exact time when Wan Yunlong’s phone was confiscated is unclear, but a week before the violent act, Wan Yunlong had told his desk mate, “After the college entrance exam, I will make life difficult for Teacher Yang!” At that time, his desk mate dismissed it as mere boasts and paid no attention.
Wang Yun mentioned that to make it easier to care for the students, Yang would usually work in an empty classroom adjacent to the class, equipped with a printer to help students print the latest test papers from the internet. There was even a bed in the empty classroom for Yang to rest during breaks.
Yang’s break inadvertently provided Wan Yunlong with an opportunity. On May 26th, while Yang was taking a break, “Wan Yunlong stabbed him in the neck artery, but Yang defended himself with the knife, causing injuries to the student’s spleen. Currently, the student is hospitalized in Zhengzhou, and his fate is uncertain,” Wang Yun stated, adding that Yang ran out of the classroom covered in blood, prompting other teachers to alert the authorities.
Many female students who witnessed the bloody scene at the time were deeply affected and requested leave to return home, Wang Yun noted.
He also mentioned that Yang was an excellent teacher with a family of five members, including a daughter who has graduated from university, a son who also graduated but isn’t married yet, and a youngest son preparing for the high school entrance exam. “This family has been shattered,” Wang Yun lamented.
After the incident, Wan Yunlong’s parents visited the school to seek explanations, claiming that the school failed to discipline their child. Wang Yun pointed out that Wan Yunlong’s parents were divorced, and he lived with his grandmother, lacking proper guidance and possibly possessing a different level of psychological resilience compared to other children. This could have led him to act impulsively and commit such extreme actions.
Following the incident, several self-media platforms on Netease published related reports on May 28th, only to be deleted a few hours later. As of the reporter’s filing, the local government had not issued an official announcement regarding the incident.
When contacted, the Taikang County government’s phone line was unreachable, as reported by an Epoch Times journalist.
Opinions on the matter varied among internet users, with many expressing sympathy for the teacher and criticizing the extreme act of killing a teacher over a trivial issue like a phone. Others emphasized that such behavior should not be condoned.
Former Associate Professor at Beijing Normal University, Li Yuanhua, attributed the occurrence of this event in China to the overall social atmosphere created by the authoritarian system of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Li pointed out that in Chinese society, individuals either have to endure silently or take risky actions as there are no normal channels for communication.
Regarding the incident, Li emphasized that regardless of the reasons, resolving conflicts through violence in such a manner is abnormal and should not be encouraged. He also criticized the CCP’s education system as a contributing factor to such incidents, focusing solely on a credit-based education model while neglecting moral education and failing to nurture high-quality students comprehensively.
According to available information, the First Senior High School in Taikang County, Zhoukou City is a publicly funded high school under the supervision of the Taikang County Education Bureau. Established in March 1949, it was designated as a model ordinary high school in Henan Province in February 2007. As of December 2024, the school occupies an area of 280 mu with two campuses, east and west, consisting of 146 teaching classes and over 500 faculty members serving more than 15,000 students.