In Beijing foreign residents think nothing of walking through crowded side streets or down bustling lanes. People might stare but they are courteous and helpful. This is one of the safest countries in the world for non-nationals. That is why it came as such a shock when the mood changed so suddenly last Saturday after the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
The attack touched something deep in the Chinese psyche, resurrecting an antagonism towards foreign powers, particularly the United States, fostered by two centuries of humiliations and fuelled by the anti-Western hysteria of the Cultural Revolution.
Even university-educated Chinese say that history is repeating itself. "We like Western fashions and studying in Berkeley or Harvard, but national pride counts for more," said a Qinghai University graduate.
For a few days the anger was directed against foreigners, particularly Americans. The first people to feel the brunt of the public fury were an unfortunate American couple who hailed a taxi at the Blue Marine French restaurant on Dongdaqiao Avenue on Saturday; they were taken up a laneway and beaten by the driver and a friend.
An American teenager who said "Screw you!" to a crowd asking his nationality ended up running for his life. Western correspondents were subjected to abuse, rude signs, lectures, and on a few occasions kicks and blows.
The rage was directed in particular against American and British diplomats. The British ambassador, Mr Anthony Galsworthy, returned from a day out on Saturday evening to find a crowd besieging his embassy, which was rebuilt after it was burnt down by Red Guards in 1967. A diplomat, Ms Harriet Hall, had a narrow escape when a stone crashed through a pane of glass.
It was "a bit scary", said Mr Galsworthy, whose wife, Jan, was nevertheless able to spend some time tending to the flower pots in the back garden.
From the time the Beijing Evening News appeared with the story of the bombing at 2 p.m. on Saturday it was risky for US citizens to leave their compounds. Cars with US plates were sometimes surrounded at traffic lights and the occupants harangued. Many of the tens of thousands of students who besieged the US embassy on Saturday shouted "Kill Americans!".
On Sunday the US ambassador, Mr James Sasser, fearing that his embassy would be overrun, began preparing to escape through the next-door Irish embassy gardens.
Ironically some of the people most at risk in the mini-Boxer Rising of last week were the Irish embassy staff, as demonstrators occasionally confused the two embassies. One of the rocks flung into the Irish garden hit Guili, a Uighur-nationality child-minder, leaving her bruised and terrified, and stones smashed through the apartment windows of two Irish officials, Mairead Carr and Martina Monaghan.
Most of the Irish staff and families were evacuated on Sunday. During the day they returned and helped to provide the trapped diplomats and marines in the US embassy with chocolate doughnuts and other comfort foods, and also facilitated the delivery over the ivy-covered garden wall of 19 sleeping bags from the British embassy.
When the Irish embassy staff left the area at night for the Jianguo Hotel less than a mile away they found some guests completely unaware of what was going on nearby. The diplomatic quarter in Beijing (along with US consulates in other cities) was the focus of the nation's hostility. Elsewhere life went on more or less normally.
"For a day or two things were very tense and unpleasant," said an American economist in his office in a Beijing suburb, "but I think people have got over it now." A Western ambassador commented: "It's been hectic here, and nasty, but if you put things in perspective, not a single foreigner has been badly injured."
On Monday the authorities moved to put out the fire. There were domestic political considerations. "A single spark can light a prairie," Mao Tsedong said once, and anti-foreigner movements in China have frequently taken on a momentum of their own.
But the government was also alarmed that the bad international publicity would scare away tourists and foreign investment.
On television on Sunday evening Vice-President Hu Jintao warned of the need for social stability. On Monday the official media ran dozens of interviews with people saying they should direct their energies to working hard rather than demonstrating.
Newspapers stopped reporting the siege of the embassies and started to paint a picture of normality. NATO apologies were published. State television insisted that it was business as usual at American and European-owned enterprises. After being waved by their professors on to buses bound for the US embassy at the weekend, students on Tuesday were told to stay on their campuses.
"Across China students are channelling their energies into study and going back to the classroom as the best way to protest against the atrocity", claimed the Xinhua news agency, adding that they were throwing themselves into intense studies to maintain order and stability and better serve China.
Desperately worried at cancelled holiday bookings, many due to US State Department travel advice against going to China, the National Tourism Administration promised yesterday that foreign tourists would encounter no problems.
"The safety for citizens of NATO nations, including the United States, to travel to China is completely guaranteed," a spokesman said. "No incidents hurting US tourists have happened within China's boundary. Their normal travel activities will not be affected at all."
Around China it was the same story. In Kunming, American tourists were assured they would be safe at the annual flower show. In Sichuan province, official media claimed that Kentucky Fried Chicken and Coca-Cola shops still doing a brisk business. A British friend remarked: "Three days ago I told my parents to cancel their trip here next week. Now I've said its probably OK to come ahead."
A Chinese translator remarked as we sipped cappucinos in a Starbucks cafe crowded with Chinese and Westerners: "I wouldn't advise going into the back streets just now. But everything's coming back to normal. I think it's over for now."