A joke is no longer funny after being repeated a dozen times.

When Cheng Kun, a lecturer in China's northeastern city of Dalian, received a joke via text message during the Spring Festival, he chose to delete it immediately - another 12 friends had sent him the same one.

More and more Chinese use text messages as a means of greeting and communication. Over 12 billion text messages were sent during the Spring Festival, the most important annual occasion for the Chinese. However, many people are becoming apathetic about greeting short messages.

"It is the Spring Festival but a negligent message even reads Happy New Year. I see no sincerity in it," Cheng said. "Many friends just download comic messages from the Internet and send them to each other."

Industrialization of Greetings?

A salesman surnamed Zhang spent the whole eve of the Spring Festival, or the Chinese Lunar New Year which fell on Jan. 29, replying to cliche greeting messages. He said with a forced smile," I cannot bear the industrialization of greetings."

Industrialization? Sure it is. Chinese Web sites and telecommunications companies have been employing "message composers" to produce mobile phone text messages. A number of China's 393 million mobile phone users just pay to download and send the messages to extend holiday greetings.

According to a survey conducted by the China Institute Of Social Investigation (CISI), more than 41 percent of the surveyed Chinese said they would send text messages to greet friends and relatives during this year's Spring Festival.

Sometimes a message composer is paid 0.125 U.S. cents every time his message is sent. Insiders said some composers raked in more than US$1,200 in a week.

Tradition Still Treasured

Besides sending mobile phone text messages, e-cards and Internet chat have become new ways for the Chinese to deliver New Year greetings, the CISI survey has found.

"I used to receive many printed cards during festivals. I was so happy to read handwritten greetings - every piece is unique," said a young lady surnamed Li.

However, Li admitted that she also chose to send text messages only because it is so convenient.

In the 1990s, beepers, or bell pagers, became a tool for most people to deliver greetings. Just like mobile phones today, the beepers could deliver greetings in written text and therefore signaled the decline of letters and printed cards.

Door-to-door greeting during the Spring Festival is still preferred by Tang Yonghua, in his 60s. He is unhappy with his children who send him greeting messages during the festival.

"I wonder why they give up the traditional ways," he said.

Greeting via telephone and text message is OK, but the traditional ways shall not be given up since face-to-face expression of feelings cannot be replaced by anything, said folklore expert Chen Jing.

Whose Golden Goose?

A message composer's income of US$1,200 a week maybe the envy of many, but it is peanuts to telecom operators.

China Mobile and China Unicom, the country's two major mobile service providers, sent about 12 billion text messages during the Spring Festival holiday, raking in 950 million yuan (US$118.8 million) and 310 million yuan (US$38.8 million) respectively.

Everyone of China's 393 million mobile phone users sent 30 messages on average from Jan. 28 to Feb. 4, according to sources from the two companies.

China Mobile alone sent 1.9 billion messages on Jan. 28, the eve of the Spring Festival, while China Unicom sent 1.4 billion.

China has witnessed a surge of text messages in recent years. A total of 30.46 billion text messages were sent in 2005, 300 times more than those in 2000.

(Xinhhua News Agency February 10, 2006)