An American basketball star playing in China was assaulted by a man with a knife on Monday but said she was only scratched in the encounter.
“First let me say I’m ok!!!!” the basketball player, Brittney Griner, wrote on her Instagram account. The Phoenix Mercury center, who is playing this winter with the Beijing Great Wall of the Women’s Chinese Basketball Association, was boarding a bus with teammates in the northeastern city of Shenyang when a man chased them with a large knife.
Ms. Griner was wearing two jackets, and the knife didn’t cut completely through, The Associated Press reported. “I was thinking I was going to end up stabbed in China and if he got to us at the back of the bus, I was going to have to fight this man with a knife,” she wrote in an email to The A.P.
The police detained a 34-year-old man suspected of committing the attack, the Liaoning Evening News reported. The man was drunk and searching for his wife, who he thought was on the bus, the newspaper said without offering further explanation.
Ms. Griner posted a short video on her Instagram account of a man in a red jacket gesticulating in front of a police car.
After winning a W.N.B.A. championship with Phoenix in September, Ms. Griner now playing her second season in China. She still feels safe, she told The A.P., adding that more security was present during Tuesday night’s game.
Violence against foreigners is rare in China, although a relative of an American volleyball coach was stabbed and killed by a Chinese man during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.