Nice, quiet end to the doughty noughties

Most of my previous New Year Eves were spent working at the copy desk back home in Calcutta, India, till a colleague came by and informed me that another year had ended.

But 2009 was a special year. For the last 10 months I have been in, and growing up with, Beijing - marveling at the grand scale and flawless handling of the CPPCC conferences held at the Great Hall of the People in March; walking along a spruced-up Chang'an Avenue in September, watching the illuminations, defining and highlighting the historic buildings as a lead-up to the Republic's 60th anniversary celebrations in October, getting my anti-H1N1 jabs in November.

I wanted to see how Beijing rung out the old and embraced the new, up, close.

At Sanlitun, the courtyard of The Village looked strangely de-populated at 10:30 pm. A colleague who has seen a few years roll by in Beijing had told me this was the place to be - that they organized a countdown here, and music, and a free flow of drinks. I was enthused. I assumed Sanlitun was Beijing's answer to the celebrations on Times Square, Trafalgar Square or Sydney Harbor on New Year's Eve.

But the piazza looked more desolate than it would be on a regular evening. The stores announcing massive seasonal discounts were empty. The coffee shop, which would normally have its clientele spilling over outside its glass doors, was a picture of dereliction.

Behind the ice skating rink a small crowd stood, shivering in the cold as they brandished tickets, waiting to get to the basement. The guards, in heavy winter gear, stared at them, stoically, from the other side of the glass. So that's where the party was, already too saturated with people to admit any more.

I had heard there would be a fireworks display at Tian'anmen Square at the midnight hour. So that's where my colleague Yang Guang and I decided we would go. Once the cab touched down on Chang'an Avenue it was skimming like a jet through the 12-lane passage, racing against itself.

Before he could drop us in front of the Great Hall of the People, a man jumped into the seat next to him. "Ugh, it's so difficult to get any transport from here. What are you waiting for? Get in," he told his companion, impatiently, even as we were still seated inside the vehicle, trying to pay up.

We went up and down the sidewalk a few times, expecting the fireworks to appear in the sky any moment and come down in a shower on the Monument to the People's Heroes.

At 12 midnight the illumination on the Forbidden City gates went off. Yang Guang asked the guard standing nearby when the fireworks were due. "Fireworks? What do you mean? There's no fireworks tonight." Apparently, there never are any on New Year's Eve.

We walked down all the way to Wangfujing, past a bunch of diehard Westerners who insisted on leaping in the air, telling the world about the end of the noughties.

How we walked and waited, waited and walked around an incredibly un-peopled and frost-wrapped Wangfujing for what seemed like a millennium but in reality was just about an hour till a bus arrived to pick us up and drop us part of the distance, is quite a tale.

Once seated in the heated interiors of the bus, I told Yang Guang I was happy that Beijing did not meet my expectations. If it did not join the rest of the world's metropolises in unleashing a stream of revelers on the road, sometimes not even sure of what they were celebrating, it showed that Beijing preferred doing things its own way.

I am positive it has more surprises lined up for me in the coming year.