The four-day cacophony of anti-NATO protesters marching through Beijing's embassy quarter began to die down yesterday.
They kept coming, but they were fewer in number and there were long lulls between groups. British embassy staff were able to clear away the rubble hurled into its forecourt.
Water trucks and rubbish carts appeared and cleaned the streets of the countless "Fuck NATO" signs. At 10.45 a.m., 50 army lorries drove off with 2,500 riot troops, leaving the protest route guarded by military police, who spent most of the day squatting in hot sunshine.
But the US ambassador, Mr Jim Sasser, remained holed up in the US embassy.
"The ambassador will remain until we feel the Chinese have guaranteed safe ingress and egress," said an embassy spokesman.
Mr Sasser is evidently staying on in his paint-splattered mission to make a point.
He could easily have left through a back exit any time and crossed a 6-ft wall between the US embassy swimming pool and the garden of the Irish embassy, and walked past the tiny central courtyard of the Irish embassy, with its fir trees and red lanterns, and out the front gate.
A small number of the 20 people besieged in the US embassy - about half of them were US marine guards - did just that during the siege, laying small ladders against the ivy-covered wall to cross into Irish national territory.
In the event of the US embassy being overwhelmed, as appeared likely on Sunday, plans had been made for Mr Sasser, a former US senator, to follow this escape route.
Those Americans who stole in and out were concerned with stocking up on fresh food to supplement emergency marine rations.
The Irish embassy staff helped out in this regard, yesterday providing a pot of chili beans and "comfort food" such as chocolate doughnuts, while Chinese guards fetched pizza which they passed to the US staff at a side gate.
The Irish compound, now evacuated at night, continues to suffer from its proximity to the building which has been the target of Chinese fury since the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on Friday.
A barrage of stones smashed what was left of the windows of Irish staff quarters in the early hours of yesterday morning.
At lunchtime yesterday, Echo, the Chinese switchboard operator in the Irish embassy, was reduced to tears in the street outside when a crowd shouted: "Why are you working for foreign dogs?"
She was rescued by Mrs Deirdre Hayes, wife of the ambassador, Mr Joe Hayes, who did some fast talking in Chinese. Passions have subsided considerably, however, since Chinese state television broadcast President Clinton's apology for the bombing at 8 a.m. yesterday.
But the repercussions of the anti-foreign fury which has been vented around the rectangular walled enclosure housing the two embassies and their gardens and tennis courts are now reverberating throughout China.
In the space of a few days the country's tourism and travel industry has all but collapsed.
The daily British Airways flight from London to Beijing, usually full, yesterday arrived almost empty, and travel agents in China fear this is a portent of things to come.
Both the US and British governments have advised their nationals not to travel to China.
Wholesale cancellation of holiday bookings from abroad has begun, leaving the managers of large new hotels with the prospect of heavy losses during the summer. Many planes leaving Beijing yesterday contained the families of expatriate business executives, many on their way to Hong Kong or Singapore until things cool down, some never to return.
The main international schools remain closed today for the third day. Almost half the 50 foreign delegates for a major financial conference due to be held in Beijing today did not come.
Foreign investment, down by 15 per cent in the first quarter of this year, is set to fall further.
The two big US fast food chains have also been hit by anti-American protests. Three of the four Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets in the southern province of Hunan were closed because of damage in protests.
Glass was smashed at some of its 52 stores in Shanghai but damage overall was minimal, said a Shanghai-based spokesman, Mr Tony Chen.
Mr Shi Wenzhe, general manager of McDonald's Shanghai operations, said there was some impact on business at its 24 outlets but no major losses.
Shanghai's vice-mayor, Mr Chen Liangyu, met foreign businessmen in Shanghai on Monday, expressing his hope that they would be able to operate normally.
That may not be possible in Beijing until after today, when the caskets containing the ashes of the three people killed in the Chinese embassy - two of them journalists - return home for a day of national mourning, following which life is expected to return to near normal in the diplomatic compounds.
More than 200 Chinese demonstrators hurled eggs at the US embassy in Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, yesterday to protest against the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
