The streets of Kashgar were eerily quiet yesterday, betraying little of the previous day's violence as local authorities implemented a nearly total lockdown of the city.
Shutters were pulled down in front of shops, and normally bustling lanes were all but deserted as soldiers swamped the alleyways. Armed with machine guns and metre-long batons, they appeared to rule out a repeat of Monday's protest.
'Nothing will happen today,' the owner of a jewellery store in the heart of the old town said. 'There is so much military here, how would anybody dare?'
But there was a sense of nervousness gripping the city as tensions between Han Chinese and Uygurs escalated across the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region .
More than 200 protesters clashed with police on Monday afternoon on the plaza outside the central Id Kah Mosque after reports of rioting in Urumqi the day before.
Close to the border with Kyrgyzstan, Kashgar is a hotbed of Uygur activism and one of the most volatile flashpoints.