At that moment, she did not have a care in the world. Fast forward 24 hours and the mellow bar music was replaced by the angry screams of Uygur men as they attempted to smash down the gates of the People's Hospital in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

"That afternoon I had been shopping. It was strangely quiet on the streets and I wore a mini-skirt and wandered around Shanxi alley (a Uygur part of the city). I've been thinking that if I had got to work late that day, I would've been beaten too, or even killed. Work saved me."

On the street she had strolled along only hours earlier, women similar to her had been savagely beaten by the rampaging mobs of "20-something Uygur boys, who clearly had no decent jobs", Guli said.

"I used to think, 'What could they possibly do to Uygur girls?' Many girls today wear fashionable clothes like me, like mini-skirts," she explained, adding the worst she had experienced was crude comments about her dress sense from "fundamentalist boys".

"They are in the minority usually, but the rioters beat every Uygur woman who wore fashionable or fancy clothing."

It was the darkest day in the history of the Xinjiang region, when Uygur rioters, funded and sparked by forces overseas, brutally slaughtered mostly Han civilians in Urumqi. At least 184 people, 137 of them Han, were killed.

The government's most recent update showed that the final death toll could eventually reach as many as 300.

Foreign media reported that the tragedy was ethnically fueled and has left a deep scar, as the city struggles to recover amid government calls for ethnic unity.

For Guli, the youngest of five children born in the remote prefecture of Hotan, and the only one who lives in Urumqi, the event offered a double blow: she has not only been forced to witness the transformation of verbal abuse into real and shocking Uygur-on-Uygur violence, but she now has fears for her working environment, as almost half of her colleagues are Han.

"The riot was beyond my worst nightmare. I may not have time for namaz (Muslim prayer) and I may be acting against fundamentalist (Muslim) customs by wearing this," she said, pointing at her one-piece dress, "but I do have beliefs in my heart."

City officials have never openly acknowledged or addressed Uygur-on-Uygur violence as an issue, but Uygur sources said it has existed in Urumqi for a long time.

"No one talks about it," a female Uygur graduate student, who refused to reveal her name for fear of retaliation, told China Daily. "People always put other things higher up on the agenda."