This is New Year’s Eve, in Hong Kong. The Lunar (or Chinese) New Year begins on Monday, Jan. 26.

But so far, today, Sunday, has been the quietest day of my four months here. Almost stunningly so. It’s as if half the island’s 1.2 million people have disappeared.

And maybe they have.

Back on Friday, all of two days ago, I was amazed by the energy and the frenetic pace of things here. The crowds in the streets, in the markets, on the subways. It was palpable and almost overpowering.

But just two days later I’m beginning to wonder if that was HK peaking out as tens of thousands of people prepared to travel to their real homes — mostly inside China proper, I’m thinking.

I took the subway over to Victoria Park for a jog at midday, expecting massive crowds. And there were none. Not by HK standards. The subway was not crowded. It was running only once every six minutes, from what I could tell (instead of every four minutes, which has been standard, till now), which would seem to indicate the people who run the trains know their clientele would not be out in huge numbers.

Aside from the New Year’s midway/carnival setup on the soccer courts, Victoria Park was far emptier than on any other Sunday I’ve seen. Normally, domestic workers from Indonesia and the Philippines throng the park, but not even they were there in the usual numbers.

And the jogging track was as empty as I’ve ever seen it.

The streets? Empty. My taxi ride to the office took about eight minutes, instead of the usual 15.

The place is just dead.

Either everyone is out of town … or they’re staying inside. Perhaps because it’s semi-cold, by HK standards. (A bit below 60 Fahrenheit.)

Anyway, I was warned back in October that the Chinese New Year is not a huge deal here, because so many people leave Hong Kong to spend the holiday with their families back home in Guangzhou, or wherever.

I will have a better feel for it tonight, when I go home — only a few hours before the Year of the Ox commences (and the Year of the Rat ends) — and get a sense of whether anybody is out and about and ready to celebrate.The train has a stop at Causeway Bay which is the place to see and be seen.

At the moment, Hong Kong is as close to a ghost town as it can get.  The calm before the storm? Or the calm that is going to last until the middle of the week?