Crossroads of World at crossroadiest: Times Square on New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve is a heady time in New York City, as anyone who has watched the ball drop can attest, even if it is experienced vicariously on TV going back to the 1970s days of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve.

At China Daily USA, it's a particularly vivid experience, as our glassy offices are about eye level with One Times Square, the building from which the kaleidoscopic ball descends. That ball is a geodesic sphere 12 feet in diameter that weighs 11,875 pounds and is covered with 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles, according to timesquareball.net.

The event that draws a million spectators (who can accurately count that many?) caps a frantic season in Midtown Manhattan, which absorbs an intense surge of visitors from Thanksgiving on.

A weekday venture up Sixth Avenue around 6 pm during the holiday season will thrust you into something resembling a human pinball machine. People bounce left and right like running backs looking for an opening, many heading for train and bus stations. But just as many are on a wide-eyed Big Apple vacation, thinking it's perfectly fine to stroll languidly during rush hour - stirring rage in the office workers whose brisk strides they disrupt.

In all the years I've lived in and near the city, I never made the pilgrimage to Times Square until last year, when I had to for work. I can attest that it seemed a lot more pleasant watching from high up than being herded between iron barriers for as far as the eye can see.

In 2014, we got to hear Taylor Swift belt out her hits to revelers who came starting in the early afternoon, waiting for hours in untold feats of bladder capacity.

China is no stranger to the bright lights of Times Square on New Year's Eve.

2014 was the fourth straight year that the countdown started with a Chinese cultural show - a performance sponsored by the Yunnan provincial government- which also paid for pricey tourism ads on the giant screen.

The Yunnan dancers showcased "the rich heritage of one of China's most beautiful provinces", New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote in a congratulatory letter.

This year in Times Square, the Sino-American Friendship Association will celebrate the 2016 China-US Tourism Year and feature a traditional Chinese ribbon dance.

Sadly, one year ago today, 36 people died in a stampede in Shanghai's The Bund district. The tragedy led to the cancellation this year of New Year's Eve celebrations in that waterfront area.

New York's Finest, who will be 6,000 strong in the area, do their typically strong job of keeping order in and around Times Square. There will be 500 to 600 more uniformed and plainclothes officers in the area than last year, Police Commissioner William Bratton said on Tuesday.

Many New Yorkers wouldn't dare be seen in Times Square on Dec 31, and often sneer at the innocents they assume come from Ohio or Pennsylvania or other distant points in the continental US who drive hundreds of miles to be part of such a gaudy event.

New Year's Eve always draws celebrities with a certain gusto like Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin or Jenny McCarthy (all three will be on hand Thursday), those with a party streak willing to brave hundreds of thousands of people and what usually are shivering temperatures.

Still, there is a euphoria in the air as the crowd giddily counts down the hours and minutes, many wearing those giant foam eyeglasses that spell out 2016.

A cynic would find the whole exercise foolhardy, but most quietly accept that the passing of another year is a time to reflect on what could have been and what will be, with one year less to accomplish it.

After the clock strikes 12, it's time for the crews to clear the streets of the detritus of the world's largest block party. (What makes people stack their garbage on the side of an overstuffed trash can, as if that has some sort of civic honor?)

Anyway, let's hope the digits on the calendar turn over to a more peaceful year around the world.

Contact the writer at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com