A decorated Yuyuan Gardens street in Shanghai on New Year's Eve.[Photo by Siva Sankar/ China Daily]

New Year's Eve

Bright, sunny, even warm morning. Streets leading to Tianzifang, Shanghai's art-and-crafts enclave in the former French Concession area, wear a deserted look. No buyers in sight at garment stores and eye-catching bouquet shops on bicycles and tricycles at intersections.

Tianzifang is bustling with visitors, a mix of foreigners and Chinese. They devour a variety of beancurd cups. Art and crafts don't seem to set cash registers ringing.

At Xintiandi, another tourist attraction nearby and the site of the first congress of the Communist Party of China, foreigners, mostly Westerners, abound.

Yuyuan Gardens must be the favorite haunt of local residents on Chinese New Year's Eve. It's a riot of colors: Red and yellow lanterns and Chinese flags hang from every conceivable nook and hook. Giant-sized, brightly painted cutouts of characters from Chinese mythology adorn building facades.

Eateries are full of wide-ranging fresh food and hungry eaters. But a store selling exquisite, handmade and expensive crystalware like Buddha figurines has no takers, despite the shopkeeper's seemingly irresistible New Year discounts.

The colorful floats and tableaux depicting various scenes of Chinese mythology draw in huge crowds and inspire a million mobile-cam shots. Some women's fancy floral headwear appears equally multi-hued, while kids seem to love sporting long, pointy antennae-like sticks on their heads.

Back at the hotel, with the 2015-16 Year of the Goat about to pass into the ages, the young Chinese receptionists are busy watching CCTV's live New Year entertainment show. I learn Shanghai police have banned the use of fireworks this year.