This year's Spring Festival is the sixth that Brian Marterer has spent in Beijing. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

On the last day of the Chinese Lunar year, the weather was lovely in Beijing and the traffic was light. Marterer, 47, went for a bike ride, passing the new People's Daily building and cutting through alleys near Qianmen and Dashilan. He stopped along the way to take pictures of beautiful or interesting scenes.

Marterer says he always looks forward to spending Spring Festival in the capital, "because it's so relaxing and nice. You can just enjoy Beijing, no traffic".

"At Christmas time, traveling is really busy, and January is really busy at work. Then suddenly, it's vacation. You go all over Beijing, and there's no traffic. It's so wonderful," he said.

Marterer had planned to go to the temple fair at Ritan Park during the first few days of the Chinese Lunar New Year, it was too crowded so he went to Yonghegong Lama Temple instead.

On the day I interviewed Marterer, the air quality index provided by the government showed that the pollution level in Beijing was more than 200, which is considered "heavily polluted". The sky in Guomao was gray, but Marterer called it youdianlan, a little bit blue.

Marterer, who is from the US state of Wisconsin, doesn't like snow and prefers Beijing to his home state because it is dry. He began studying Chinese part time in 2002 when he was working in Europe.

In 2006, he transferred from Europe to Hong Kong and in 2007, he moved to Shanghai. After quitting his job at ABN Amro Bank, he came to Beijing in 2008 and studied Chinese full-time for two years until he started working for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

He says China is "100 times more exciting than Europe".

Marterer's favorite season in Beijing is summer and he enjoys strolling hutong at night during that time of the year.

"What I really enjoy about spending the Spring Festival holiday in Beijing is the freedom to explore the city which has little traffic. I would rather spend a holiday roaming the city here than go away to a beach somewhere," he said.