Xie Lixia weathers military action, just as she has done over the last five decades
Xie Lixia, the only Hongkonger living in the Syrian capital of Damascus, was safe on Saturday after a series of US-led air strikes on the country, a Chinese embassy official said.
The official also said he visited the 79-year-old, who has lived in Syria for over half a century, the day before the air strikes.
“I visited Xie… and extended my regards to her [on Friday],” embassy political counsellor Ma Xuliang said.
Ma said that after the air strikes embassy staff contacted “83 ethnic Chinese” in Syria, “no matter they are Chinese passport holders or not”.
“Xie was among them who was confirmed to be safe and secure,” he said.
Xie was 16 in 1955 when she went to study engineering at Wuhan University in Hebei province, where she met “Yakubu”, one of the first batch of three Syrian students sent to study in China in 1957, according to state-run news agency Xinhua.
