As millions fight the crowds to make their way back home for family reunions before the Spring Festival break, a quicker and less harrowing way to exchange New Year greetings is growing in popularity - the short message service, or SMS.

With cell phones now a major mode of communication for the country’s more than 600 million mobile-phone subscribers, sending festival greetings via SMS is emerging as the preferred choice.

The number of messages sent during 2008 weeklong Spring Festival holiday hit a record 17 billion, compared with 15 billion in the same period in 2005, according to figures from mobile-phone operator China Mobile. And an online survey by IT company Tegic Communications also showed that close to 80 percent of respondents favored sending New Year greetings via SMS.

Spring Festival, with a history of at least 4,000 years, is the country’s most important festival for families to spend time together. In these two years, it has become a vogue for relatives and friends to send short messages to greet each other during the festival. With best wishes, the warm greeting of text message give a happy and joyful atmosphere of the Chinese New Year.

Initially popular only among tech-savvy youngsters, sending SMS greetings is now becoming an important, fast, low-cost and convenient tool of communication for people of all ages.