The city looks very modern and clean. With the world top class lnfras like mega airports, high speed railways, city subways, cant imagine this same place was an extremely terrorist plagued shithole which everyone lived in constant fear of being blown up when walking in the street only several years ago.
The most famous video footage from several years ago about this city was an incident that one random person suddenly started running and it caused a terrible stampede of the whole city, people just ran like crazy without knowing why they ran. That incident showed how fragile people minds became during those times. If you run in Urumqi today, no one cares the least.