I came to Xinjiang on Monday with every hope that stability would resume, that any nonsense violence be immediately stopped, or, at the very least, that all sides could treat the situation seriously and make no wrong moves.

But instead, I witnessed tension escalate in Urumqi, even as authorities tried their best to keep things under control. Stones were thrown, shovels were piled, wooden sticks and steel bars were carried, slogans were shouted and tear gas was fired all across this beautiful, remote western city.

In less than two days, what began as the autonomous region’s deadliest riot in six decades quickly evolved into unprecedented ethnic clashes and elevated hatred among the local peoples, segregated by prevalent separatist propaganda from overseas on the one hand and, perhaps in turn, increasingly discriminative views from Han residents on the other. 

All things aside, the question we should really be asking now is: whither Urumqi?

Everybody on the scene can elaborate at length, without getting to the bottom of the issue, what happened and is happening. I was, at 2 pm today, looking for a Uygur guard at the No. 2 People’s Hospital who reportedly saved some Han Chinese from the rioters Sunday night.

As I wandered around asking the guard’s whereabouts, scores of patients, mostly Uygurs, appeared from seemingly nowhere and, each deeply frightened, rushed into different hospital buildings. A few passersby shouted in Mandarin: “They’re coming! They’re coming!”

I followed. Everyone tried to hide somewhere; my safe haven was the department of gynaecology and obstetrics on the fourth floor of the outpatient building. I was the odd Han Chinese in the fully locked room, where more than a dozen anxious Uygur men and women awaited their fate.

Even they were utterly terrified by the Uygur rioters who, according to Shache resident Tuerhon Memeti, “would scare the shit out of anyone who comes near”. He, together with the rest of those who sought refuge in the room and the hospital staff, were urging for immediate government intervention because “otherwise, things could go really, really wrong”.

And it did. Without timely, adequate security presence, most Han inhabitants, who had been advised to stay home, voluntarily gathered to defend their families themselves with shovels, sticks, batons, and even baseball bats.

Leaving police work to the hands of civilians is far from wise, for justice always lies in the eyes of the beholder and, in the context of Sunday’s gruesome violence against Han inhabitants, ethnic revenge seemed to be a logical first choice.

But when the dozens of young Han residents took it to the streets, smashing cars and demanding that the “blood debt” be paid, and when even younger ethnic Uygurs responded with throwing stones and rocks back, people on both sides were desperately waiting for state intervention.

Deep down, the scared faces of ethnic Hans and Uygurs alike speak the same thing: we live in China, not Afghanistan or Iraq. Our home is no battlefield. Xinjiang has always been a place where people can simply and happily go to school, fall in love, work and grow old. It should always stay that way.

And most, if not all, in fact, were urging that government take “immediate and fierce action” against the rioters, whatever ethnic group they may belong to.

Had the police force arrived ten minutes earlier in most places where clashes broke out yesterday, or if the curfew were imposed earlier, much violence could have been prevented.

Rocks wouldn’t have to be thrown (I was almost hit by one myself). Tear gas wouldn’t have to be fired. Shovels, sticks and other simple-but-deadly weapons, which are still being widely distributed by local companies for self-defense, wouldn’t have to be made.

Most importantly, people wouldn’t have to be running for their own, or after some else’s, lives.

Ethnic harmony has never been more relevant as it is today in Xinjiang. The ethnic groups here – not just the Han and the Uygurs – have peacefully coexisted in this land for thousands of years. There’s no reason anyone can’t do the same now.

As many people on both sides of the spectrum here put it, the core of what has happened isn’t ethnic or culture-based. In Xinjiang today, all fancy words should be reserved for future essays; separatism is separatism, terrorism is terrorism. Timely government intervention is in the interest of all peoples of this land. After all, nobody should, or can, be left behind to face this alone.