Shootings leave Chinese students in fear

Recent mass shootings on college campuses in the United States have left some Chinese students — the largest group of international students in the US — feeling scared and numb to the violence.

Classes were canceled for a second straight day on Tuesday at the University of Virginia, or UVA, in Charlottesville as the campus community mourned the deaths of three students who were shot and killed on Sunday night by another student at the school.

Chinese students account for 50.4 percent of international students at UVA, and 4.2 percent of UVA's student body. In 2020, UVA was home to approximately 1,087 Chinese students, according to College Factual.

"To be honest, I'm used to the occasional gunshot alarms here," Lin Zeng, a first-year Chinese graduate student at UVA, told China Daily.

Henry Li, also a first-year Chinese graduate student at UVA, said he had planned on going to school on Sunday night.

"The time that I planned to go to school happened to be around the same time that the shooting happened. And the location where the shooting took place was the parking lot of our academic building," Li told China Daily. "If I had gone to school to study, I would have run into the shooting in the parking lot."

More than 500 people sheltered throughout campus buildings. Some of the students in Li's class are from China.

"They were studying in the building near the shooting spot at that time. After the shooting, the school reacted very quickly. The manhunt started immediately, the students entered the shelters, and the doors of the academic building were locked. Many of my classmates were just locked in the building overnight," said Li, adding that they did not leave until 4 or 5 in the morning.

Constant alerts

That night, Li said he received a total of 58 alerts. "At the end of the night, I became numb to receiving alerts," he said.

Zeng said he receives about three gunshot alerts per semester. He said the frequency is not too high.

"My friend in the Baltimore area receives gunfire alerts almost every two days," he said.

The shooting at UVA was one of nine mass shootings over the weekend. At least 68 shootings have unfolded this year on US school grounds, including 15 on college campuses, with at least one person shot in each case, not including the shooter, CNN reported.

In some shootings, Chinese students have also been victims.

Last year, Zheng Shaoxiong, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, was shot and killed in a robbery attempt in the city's Hyde Park neighborhood.

Ten months ago, Fan Yiran, a PhD student at the same university, was killed in a rampage that left at least three people dead.