Daily Sunshine
July 11, 2008

Today's Daily Sunshine, a newspaper published in Shenzhen, printed on its front page a photo of Yang Jia, the 27-year-old man who murdered six police officers in Shanghai on July 1. The picture is grabbed from Yang's MySpace page, and can still be found here.

From Yang's MySpace photos, he appears to be quite a regular guy with a strong interest in outdoor activities and taking photos. Most of his pictures are landscapes of suburban Beijing with another few showing Yang and his friends on their trips in the countryside.

Yang Jia on the front page of Southern Metropolis, July 2

Yang describes himself thusly in the "want to meet" column: As an aging single man, I want most to meet pretty girls (一个大龄光棍现在最想结交的就是美女). Yang's buddy list shows that he has 118 friends, with the vast majority being female. One fact that has been frequently referred to by the media is that among the eleven Yang killed or injured, none of them are female.

Yang doesn't write much on his blog; there is only one entry which is a record of a hiking trip on May 17, written in a meticulous manner—reminiscent of his well-planned murderous rampage. Nothing in the writing reveals the scheme he must have been pondering for some time before he finally went to the police station and finally carried it out.

The most interesting part maybe is the comments left by visitors: Some express disbelief that such a fun-loving man should commit such a heinous crime; some feel sorry for him; and some admire his courage, with one in particular saying "you have done what most people want to do but don't have enough courage to do."