Chinese Actor Executed For Murder Of 16-Yr-Old Girlfriend; The First Artiste In China Sentenced To Death

In December last year, Chinese actor Zhang Yiyang became the first artiste in China to be executed for a crime. He was 34. 

According to the Xianyang Intermediate People’s Court in Shaanxi, he was executed by a firing squad. 

He was convicted of the brutal murder of his 16-year-old girlfriend back in 2022. 

The court document from the Shaanxi People's Court revealed that Yiyang's girlfriend, surnamed Zhang, was 15 years old when they started dating.

When Zhang initiated a break up, Yiyang flew into a state of fury. 

In February 2022, Yiyang lured Zhang into a secluded forest in Xingping City under the pretense of celebrating his birthday.

A heated argument broke out during their meeting, and Yiyang, in a fit of rage, repeatedly stabbed Zhang in the neck with a folding knife, severing her carotid artery and windpipe.

Yiyang then went home to change his clothes, which he later threw into a river together with Zhang's phone. 

After the murder, the actor attempted suicide in a hotel but was saved by a staff who called the police, leading to his eventual arrest.

The court sentenced Yiyang to death for intentional homicide after seeing that he showed no remorse during the two-year trial.

Despite all that, Yiyang's posthumous movie Jie You Yin Sheng Guan still premiered in March this year, and netizens were not happy about it.

Many took to Douban to give one-star ratings, asserting that the show shouldn't have been released since the lead actor was executed for murder.