A white horse gallops along a tree-lined pedestrian road in Xi'an Shiyou University on Sunday. Photo: Screenshot of video by The Beijing News

A white horse eats grass and stamps its hooves in Xi'an Shiyou University on Sunday. Photo: Screenshot of video by The Beijing News

A small horse on Sunday broke loose and got past a university's security gate to gallop through a university campus, while amused students took videos and snapped photos of the bewildered equine. 

Several online posts show the horse galloping along a tree-lined pedestrian road in Xi'an Shiyou University in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province on Sunday morning. The viral video on Sina Weibo shows the horse galloping near a teaching building with several people chasing it before falling far behind the horse in hurry. 

School staff finally caught the horse and tied it with a very short leash to a tree using a red rope. Students were amazed by the animal, which walked around the tree, ate some grass and stamped its hooves trying to get free. 

"Do you want to study in our university?" one student asked jokingly in the video. "Here is the white horse but where is the prince?" a Net user posted on Weibo.

The horse owner came to the school later that day to retrieve his animal. He also promised to pay for the cost of repairing the broken gate. 

Global Times