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Giving old holiday traditions an update
"After three to four years of development, sending greeting messages has melted
into the blood of the people," said Yu Zhangkun, an analyst with Beijing-based
consulting firm Byna.
The change is a good thing, said 24-year-old Vincent Li from Shandong.
Last Spring Festival, Li made his own online card with Photoshop then
e-mailed the greeting to his friends. It's a good compromise between the
impersonal Internet and the wastefulness of sending paper cards, he said.
But not everyone is happy about the switch.
"There's been a huge difference in sales between this year and last year,"
said sales clerk Wang Dan, 26, who works at a card shop in Beijing's Chaoyang
District.
In previous years the store sold 10,000 paper cards during the holidays. This
year sales hit 3,000.
Online shopping
Shopping online for Spring Festival gifts is also becoming an increasingly
popular alternative to braving busy shopping centres.
This year, Taobao.com, a major Internet retailer, launched a special holiday
promotion in an attempts to grab a share of the season's retail boom, which was
160 billion yuan (US$20 billion) last Spring Festival, according to Ministry of
Commerce statistics.
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