A tourist guide has been charged with stabbing 20 people in a tourist town of southwest China's Yunnan Province on Sunday, injuring two of them seriously, local police confirmed on Monday.

A tourist guide from northeast China's Heilongjiang Province receives treatment Monday at a local hospital after being injured by another guide who injured 20 people during a slashing rampage in Lijiang, southwest China's Yunnan Province, on Sunday, April 1, 2007. [Life News]

Xu Minchao, a 25-year-old tourist guide with a travel agency in northeast China's Jilin Province, was arrested Sunday in the ancient city of Lijiang on the charges of stabbing 15 tourists and five locals, Life News reported Tuesday.

Two boys were seriously injured, including seven-year-old Xiao Wen whose artery on the neck was cut open by the enraged guide and a 15-year-old tourist from east China's Anhui Province who suffered brain injuries and remains in critical condition.

"Heavy blood loss almost killed Xiao Wen. Thanks to the experts who flew from Kunming (the capital of Yunnan) and operated on him that very night, my son was saved from the jaws of death." Mr. Ye, Xiaowen's father, told the paper.

Police said Xu was accompanying a 40-member tour group from the northeastern Jilin Province to Lijiang when he got into an argument with a guide surnamed Peng from a Kunming-based travel agency on Sunday afternoon.

After Peng left, Xu went to "borrow" a knife from a roadside souvenir shop. Then, he suddenly lost control and stabbed a saleswoman at the shop before going on a stabbing rampage. "He slashed at whomever within his reach, without even a word." witnesses said.

A total of 20 people, including 15 tourists and 5 local residents or business people from other parts of the country, suffered injuries at his hands.

Tourists on the tour group said Xu once spoke of and cried over his divorced parents, looking rather depressed, which police suspect might have led to his stabbing rampage.

The Lijiang government said they have sent the best doctors from the provincial capital Kunming to treat the injured people, and local police are investigating whether Xu has a history of mental illness.

But tourist guides say it is not uncommon for Kunming guides to be attacked.

Xiao Long, a travel guide with three-year working experience, said after learning of the incident, "It's nothing big, Kunming guides tend to be attacked at local tourist sites."

Liu, another local tourist guide, also told the paper it is common for the tourist guide from Kunming to be beaten up, because they often stop tourist from shopping in places outside the capital city.

"Though Yunnan has always advocated 'no-barrier' tourism, protectionism still exists when it comes to shopping." Liu was quoted as saying.

But they all say stabbing rampage aimed at tourists is quite rare.