Delivery rider rams scooter into knife attacker, gets named after video game hero

A 20-year-old food delivery rider rammed a knife-wielding man with his electric scooter on a street in northwestern China, ending an attack that had wounded two people. Yu Rongxian was carrying two orders for the delivery platform Meituan shortly after 9 p.m. on Aug. 18 when he passed a confrontation outside the Jinniu residential compound in Chengdong District, Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province.The Beijing News reported that a man who had been drinking was holding a knife, that two people had been slashed and that several residents were trying to talk him down while others held him off with sticks.Yu set the meals down at the roadside, rode around behind the man and drove the scooter into him, knocking him to the ground.Bystanders moved in and held him down until police arrived and subdued him, The Beijing News reported.Qinghai police said on Aug. 20 that compulsory measures, which range from detention to formal arrest, had been taken against the man.Yu had just picked up the food on Beixiao Street and was passing the compound gate near the Xinsheng Lane intersection when he saw the knife, he told Cover News.A crowd had gathered but nobody would go near a man holding a blade, he said, and he could see the man was drunk, with his attention fixed entirely on the person in front of him."I was out delivering that evening and saw a man running around with a knife. I thought this was the sort of thing I should step in and stop," Yu wrote in a post on his own social media account."So I put the food to one side, went around behind him and knocked him over. After that I went back to delivering."Yu, who has ridden off-road motorbikes, said he did not squeeze the throttle all the way, to keep the scooter's impact from causing excessive injury.The scooter was the fastest and most effective option he could think of, he told Cover News, and he controlled how hard he hit. A sign of Meituan delivery service is seen on a delivery box on a scooter, in Beijing's Central Business District, China, July 15, 2020. Photo by Reuters Bystander footage of the maneuver circulated widely on Chinese social media, where viewers compared the way Yu launched the scooter to a signature move by Sun Ce, a character in Tencent's mobile game "Honor of Kings". They began calling him the game's best Sun Ce player.Yu had played the Sun Ce character before, he said, though not often, and did not mind the nickname.The first video Yu posted to his own account drew more than 3.4 million likes and close to 100,000 followers within 24 hours, Jimu News reported.He said he had put it up only because he was worried about being misunderstood.Asked by commenters whether he would have been liable had someone been badly hurt, Yu told Jimu News that stepping in is a decision made on the spot, with no time to weigh it up.Yu, who comes from Hainan Prefecture in Qinghai, turned 21 on Aug. 20, two days after the incident.Meituan presented him that morning with an appreciation pennant naming him a "Pioneer Rider" and CNY5,000 ($740), and the delivery station where he works held a birthday celebration, Jimu News reported.The Xining branch of scooter maker Niu Technologies posted a video offering him a new electric scooter and a quarterly battery-swap package, which Yu confirmed to Jimu News."Honor of Kings" issued a nationwide appeal to find him and said it wanted to send a gift.