By staff reporter Zhao Hejuan and guest reporter Fan Wenxin

Workers at a Hangzhou instrument gauge factory in eastern China’s Zhejiang Province remember Tang Yongming as an ordinary colleague who liked to joke and play cards at a local tea house.

Tang could be talkative, opinionated and moody, his former workmates told Caijing. But none thought he could kill in cold blood.

Police, however, have identified 47-year-old Tang as the knife-wielding man who shattered the peace of the Beijing Olympics’ first day by attacking an American couple and their Chinese tour guide before killing himself. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said the couple’s adult daughter was also at the scene but escaped injury.

The husband, however, didn’t escape Tang’s blade and  died at the Drum Tower tourist site near central Beijing. U.S. news agencies identified the man as the father-in-law of the coach of the U.S. men’s volleyball team. The wounded wife and tour guide are expected to recover.

After the stabbing spree, police said, Tang killed himself by leaping from the tower’s upper level.

The August 9 incident came less than 24 hours after the capital city successfully opened the games with a Bird’s Nest stadium gala a few miles away. An embassy statement said the attack was “what appears to be a senseless act of violence.”

An unemployed divorcee, Tang had no permanent address. Police said he lived in a small room in Hangzhou before traveling to Beijing in search of a better life August 1.

Tang’s only brush with the law involved his 21-year-old son Tang Wenjun, who was arrested by Hangzhou police on fraud charges in 2007 and sentenced in March to six months in prison.

Acquaintances said Tang spoiled the son, who returned the affection by spending his father’s life savings of 200,000 yuan.

The money came from the sale of an apartment Tang got in a severance package when he was laid off by his former employer, Xizi Group, during a 2003 downsizing.

Tang’s life spiraled downward after he lost his job. He got a temporary position at the Xizi mailroom, but a supervisor found him incompetent. Quarrels with his wife over her alleged affair led to a 2005 divorce. He tried new partners, but failed miserably at romance.

Some acquaintances said Tang invested in the stock market and lost his shirt. Others said he went to Sichuan Province in search of work in April, but left when the region was struck by an earthquake a month later.

He returned to his 10 square meter, 300 yuan per month room in rural Hangzhou for a few months before making a final rent payment and moving out with his belongings August 1.

At the base of the Drum Tower, Beijing police retrieved Tang’s identification card and alerted Hangzhou police. Two hours after the stabbings, police entered Tang’s vacant room. They found no note and nothing to explain the sudden violence.

The owner of the Harmony restaurant in Hangzhou said Tang behaved normally August 1 when he stopped for a morning bowl of noodles. Later that day, police said, Tang boarded a train for Beijing.

Before leaving for the capital, police said, Tang made a phone call to his son and said he would try his luck elsewhere. He told the son he’d return home if he made it. But if he failed, he said, the son needn’t search for him.

Tang also told his son to behave himself, and then hung up.

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