New Year with hope

"It will take a long time and efforts of the entire society to revamp the relationship between ethnic groups in Xinjiang," said Ma Dazheng, director of the Xinjiang development research center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

As the New Year holiday was approaching, local government decorated the trees with paper flowers and the squares and parks with ice sculptures so as the change the city' s gloomy image after the riot.

Zou Huabin, a businessman from the eastern Zhejiang province who had been in Xinjiang for 10 years was optimistic of his business next year.

A clothes seller in the Xiaoximen clothes market, Zou said his business was affected a lot by the riot.

"Many of my friends closed their stores here and returned to their hometowns," he said. But Zou, encouraged by the tax reduction in Urumqi, decided to stay.

"Someone told me that more favorable policies shall come out next year," he said. "If possible, I would like to open a store in Kazakhstan."

After the riot, student Liu Xialing' s parents suggested that she find a job in Shanxi. "After all you have relatives there who could take care of you," they said.

But Liu refused.

"I had been living in Xinjinag for 18 years," she said emotionally. "My friends, my teachers and my memories were all here. How should I adapt to another place which was totally unfamiliar to me?"

Like Liu, the 68-year-old Zeng Ying had been living in Urumqi for 30 years. When he was young, the busy man left his children to his Uygur neighbor Patamkhan to take care.

Despite the riot, the two elderly people still visited each other from time to time. "After so many years, our friendship couldn' t vanish overnight," Patamkhan said.

Zeng and Patamkhan shared a common wish. "Hopefully next year there won' t be collision between the Hans and the Uygurs any more, and people could coexist in peace as if nothing happened."

(Xinhua News Agency January 1, 2010)