Ma Alish,an ethnic Hui native from Linxia, Gansu province, stands in his Lhasa butcher shop. He said the rampage last month cost him more than 700,000 yuan, including a truck.

Stores lining the Bakhor and nearby streets around the Jokhang depend heavily on tourist trade and the riot has deprived them of their most important source of revenue. Some were damaged or even destroyed that day.

A little more than a block east of the Potala Palace, near the west end of Beijing Donglu, an Only store, owned by the Denmark-based Bestseller group, remained a charred black hole until Friday when workers finally installed new doors.

Just meters to its east is the Yishion garment store where five young women were burned to death when rioters set fire to the building.

At the site of the previous Niumo Shijia garment store, a little north of Beijing Donglu, on the Duosen'ge Lu, stall owners are holding closing down sales under a makeshift plastic-film roof.

A woman surnamed Liu from Heilongjiang province, who refused to give her full name, said she had only been in Lhasa for nine days when rioters unleashed their fury.

She and her partners had just transported 120,000-yuan worth of garments from Guangzhou but were lucky enough to escape the burning and looting.

"There were eight people trying to pry open the door downstairs - it was horrible," she recalled.

She said she was anxious to sell out everything and leave.

More fire-damaged buildings are visible further eastward down Beijing Donglu.

Near the Bank of China branch that was smashed and burnt a newly opened supermarket was cleaned out during the riot.

The same happened to a butcher's shop owned by Ma Alish, an ethnic Hui native of Linxia, Gansu province.