"what's going on here, what are all these people doing?" the policeman asked. "Everybody move away," said his colleague, shooing people along.

It was two minutes past midnight on New Year's Day and the officers had emerged from the Forbidden Palace to find thousands of people milling around in Tiananmen Square and on the little bridges and footpaths outside.

Here in the biggest city-centre space in the world, celebrations of the arrival of the new millennium were muted, to say the least. There was nothing organised for the people who walked or drove to the square. The police seemed taken aback that anyone should turn up. There were no fireworks, there was no countdown to the last second of 1999, nor was there even a public clock on view to see the old year tick away. Apart from groups of Westerners who cheered and toasted the New Year with champagne, Beijingers were left just to mill around and to move along when told by police, while thousands more sounded their horns in a traffic jam on Chang'an Avenue.

Some young people camped out in the vast plaza overnight in sleeping bags so they could watch the daily flag-raising at dawn. China's leaders, meanwhile, were at the site of a Millennium Altar in a park near the Military Museum in another part of the city, to which only organised groups were invited. There President Jiang Zemin pressed a button at midnight to light a "sacred flame" on the altar, symbolising China's 5,000-year-old civilisation. The New Year was rung in with 21 strikes on a specially cast giant bronze bell, the blows from a battering ram vibrating for a long time in the freezing air. For this select audience there was a short fireworks display, plus Chinese lion and dragon dances and singing by a massed choir, all broadcast on Chinese television.

Many Beijing residents celebrated the first dawn of the new millennium on the Great Wall, less than an hour's drive from the Chinese capital, but were prevented by a rare cloud cover from seeing the first rays of the sun.

Those who braved the cold described it as an unforgettable experience. One Irish reveller, Mrs Sylvia Severi, said, "It was just incredible and exhilarating, with umpteen dragons, Mogul warriors, a Pavarotti wannabe and lots of adults and schoolchildren swarming all over the place."

Many thousands of well-to-do Chinese spent the hours around midnight shopping until 2 a.m. in Beijing's pedestrian precinct of Wangfujin, converted into the capital's smartest commercial thoroughfare after a multi-million-dollar real estate investment by Hong Kong tycoon Mr Li Ka-shing.

In other millennium events in China, 2,000 couples from across the country took part in a mass wedding ceremony at Beijing's Olympic Sports Centre, and 50 Chinese and Japanese students set a new world record when they toppled 2.5 million dominoes in 32 minutes. The dominoes formed elaborate pictures, including a Van Gogh self-portrait and Picasso's Weeping Woman.

Some 10,000 mountaineering enthusiasts representing 56 of China's ethnic groups met early on Saturday at the snowcapped peak of Mount Taishan, the highest peak in eastern China, according to the official China news agency, Xinhua.

On Saturday President Jiang delivered a New Year address in which he stepped up pressure for Taiwan's reunification with China.

"We have reason to believe that the Taiwan issue can definitely be resolved," Mr Jiang told senior Communist Party officials at a Beijing tea party. China "will never sit with folded arms when faced with any attempt to split the Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Five Christians were arrested in Beijing on New Year's Day, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China. It said a group of Christians had planned a prayer meeting to mark the new millennium on Saturday morning, but they were stopped by police in Beijing.

Five were detained before the meeting could start, the human rights group said, and another four on their way did not arrive. The Information Centre said it was likely they were also detained by police. Only "official" churches may conduct worship in China.

One of the missing was Ms He Xintong, wife of Mr Xu Wenli, one of the founders of the banned China Democracy Party.