People of different ethnic groups across China have been celebrating the traditional lunar New Year which fell on Thursday in different ways.

Short message service (SMS) have replaced telephone calls and postcards to become the most popular way for Chinese to extend good wishes to their friends and relatives in greeting the arrival of the Year of the Monkey.

The latest information from Beijing Unicom and Beijing Mobile shows that from Wednesday noon through to early Thursday morning, cellphone subscribers registered in Beijing alone sent over 100 million short messages, and the two companies raked in a hefty sum of 10 million yuan (US$1.21 million) in earnings from SMS.

It is estimated that some 10 billion greeting messages will be sent via mobile phones during the seven-day lunar New Year holiday season which began on Jan.22, said industry sources.

Yu Zhihai, a specialist on folklore, said that the Spring Festival holiday is a time for relaxation.

So the number of people who choose to travel during the Spring Festival holiday season has been rising rapidly. Travel agencies in Beijing organized 280,000 people on overseas tour programs for the Spring Festival holiday this year, up eight percent from last year.

Qin Peiyu, 28, who lives in downtown Beijing's Chaoyang District, said he believed Spring Festival was a good time for exercise and rejuvenation. He said he would go skiing with his family in the suburbs of the city during the week-long holiday season.

In neighboring Tianjin, special bus and taxi services have been organized to give free rides to the general public during the Spring Festival.

On Thursday night, a local rock and roll band in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region entertained young Tibetans at the New Century Langma Hall of Lhasa, the regional capital, who engulfed the band with thundering applause.

(Xinhua News Agency January 24, 2004)