Kashgar, the oasis city that sits on the edge of China's western Taklamakan desert, feels like so many of the cities scattered across China's vast breadth - wrenched in two by the growing pains of rapid growth.

The ugly modern office blocks and shopping centres that seem to have come from the same design catalogue that so many Chinese architects work from are all there.

But the city's unique charm springs from the hidden mosques, traditional adobe houses and winding alleyways of the old town.

Faces with an unusual and unexpected twist of Asia and Europe peer out of dark alleyways as tourists stroll through streets that appear untouched by time.

But it is not a hostile city. Warm welcomes are offered by both the local ethnic Uighurs and the migrant Han Chinese alike.

Even the police who detained us as we tried to visit the site of a camp the government had said was a training centre for a group with links to al-Qaeda did so with apologetic friendliness.

Silk Road gateway

China says Xinjiang groups are plotting attacks on the Olympics [GALLO/GETTY]

Farmers that spoke to us of their unhappiness with the local government had grievances about the lack of investment in their fields and roads and it seemed to be more of a question of water shortages, not religious differences.

Reaction in Beijing to the attack in Kashgar has been swift, with officials quick to identify violent groups they say are bent on founding a separate state in Xinjiang - the same groups that the Chinese government has consistently said pose the most serious threat to a peaceful Olympics.

But very little evidence has ever been provided to substantiate this threat, and all of it has come from the Chinese government itself.

It is always hard to pinpoint what drives a person to violence on this scale, but to characterise Kashgar as a hotbed of ethnic tension, as the government in Beijing appears to be doing, is to paint a very different picture of the city we recently visited.