Shanghai Daily | 上海日报 -- English Window to China News

A young hairdresser who was pictured in a newspaper kneeling in public and begging his girlfriend to come back to him, was caught attacking her with a knife last night.

Police are investigating the savage attack, the Chongqing Evening News reported today.

Brandishing a knife Wang Qingwei had chased his girlfriend, Su Hong, into a dress shop in Yuxi Square last night.

Two men in the shop tried to stop him with chairs but Wang managed to evade them and stab the woman.

“"After the attack Wang stabbed at himself in the left leg," said a witness surnamed Li. The crowd who gathered recognized him as the man pictured in the newspaper on Tuesday, kneeling down in the public.

Police brought the newspaper along and showed it as they negotiated with Wang and eventually persuaded him to let them carry him out of the shop and be taken for treatment. The woman and a man who was also hurt in the attack were covered with blood and were taken quickly to the No. 2 People’s Hospital.

In the now famous newspaper story Wang was pictured kneeling in Chaotianmen Square with a bundle of rose and a board on which he had written "Come back, my wife."

He said they met each other four years ago and now lived together. Wang admitted in the newspaper article that he had beaten Su up several times and they quarreled constantly. "I won't treat her like that in the future and will stay with her all my life," Wang told the newspaper.

Su had quarreled with him at night of October 9 and left home the next day. Before the attack last night the last people knew was that he had been visiting all her usual haunts trying to find her.