In addition to text messages, Chinese people have begun sending songs and flashworks via their mobile phones as festival greetings during this year's week-long Spring Festival Holidays.

"I have received lots of songs and funny flashworks these days. I like them," said Ning Shuyong, a white-collar worker in Beijing.

"They convey more meaning than traditional text messages."

A marketing manager with Beijing Unicom responsible for the songs said orders for songs have grown very fast. "The Spring Festival may have contributed to the boom," he said.

"Input the name of the song and the target mobile phone number, and then send them to the operator; the song will be forwarded to the target mobile phone immediately," says the operational instructions.

According to mms.kongzhong.com, a multimedia message service content provider, the site receives dozens of orders for flashwork daily. Each piece costs the sender 2 yuan, far higher than the text messages, which is about 0.1 yuan.

"Multimedia will become the trend," said Ning, who works with an IT company. "It enriches your life and your loved ones."

By the end of 2004, the number of Chinese mobile phone users had surpassed 330 million. They sent 217.7 billion short messages last year, including 9.8 billion sent during last year's Spring Festival.

Frequently cited reasons for Chinese people's fondness of short messages include saving the trouble of talking about meaningless things, low cost and time. At one touch, the same message can reach scores of friends and relatives in a second.

Source: Xinhua