Fireworks among few signs of life in Beijing

Everyone was gone from Beijing. My apartment compound filled with the chirping of birds - a sound rarely heard over the din of everyday life - punctuated by distant fireworks. Save for a man rolling by on a squeaky bicycle, I saw no other person as I walked toward the subway station on Chinese New Year's Eve.

If city life in Beijing were a thousand layers of single moments, the days leading up to Spring Festival had stripped away nearly all of them, leaving few signs of life to keep us from hysterically running down the empty streets in a dream sequence reminiscent of 2001 sci-fi flick Vanilla Sky.

I crossed the city via the subway, indulging in the dearth of commuters. Curiously, I saw an unusual number of foreigners on my ride, who were presumably tourists. "What impression must they have of this normally head-spinning, bustling city in its holiday slumber?" I thought to myself.

What was I doing here? Having scratched my travel itch in January with a trip abroad, I opted for a Spring Festival in Beijing - a decision made easier by my friends' lack of travel plans. We gathered in a high-rise apartment in the southeast of the city, ready for a night of fireworks, making and eating jiaozi (dumplings), and the warm feelings of a family dinner spent with people we'd grown to consider kin.

As we set to work on the ingredients before us - piles of dough, one white and one dyed with spinach to denote meat-free dumplings for the vegetarians, corn, carrot, tofu, pork and greens - we focused on improving upon our handiwork. Like encouraging aunties, we remarked on each other's progress in folding the edges of the dough to create the proper curl in each jiaozi.

When it came time for a Chinese New Year's toast, we cried: "To slaying the dragon!" The year had been auspicious for some and challenging for all. It had reminded those of us met with particular setbacks just what we are made of. The closing year held memories of birthdays, new jobs, engagements, and loss - all of which we lived through together.

For the first time since I arrived in China, the fireworks that lit up the sky seemed to chase away the darkness, succeeding in their purpose of scaring off bad spirits plotting to sneak into another year to wreak more havoc.