After the past three years of growth, instant messenger WeChat's red packets - or hongbao in Chinese - have become one of the most prevalent and popular aspects of the Spring Festival.

According to statistics provided by Tencent Holdings Ltd, the provider of the WeChat services, on Feb 2, 46 billion red packets were sent and received during the six days from lunar New Year's Eve to the fifth day of the first lunar month (Jan 27 to Feb 1), up 43.3 percent year-on-year.

The Lunar New Year's Eve was the peak for the red packets, when a total of 14.2 billion red packets were sent and received, up 75.7 percent year-on-year. A man in Shenzhen sent a record 2,125 red packets on the day, while another man in Binzhou in eastern China's Shandong province got the most red packets, receiving 10,069 red envelopes.

People in Guangdong were the most generous, sending and receiving 5.84 billion red packets during the surveyed six days. Jiangsu ranked second on the list, with 2.93 billion red packets, followed by Shandong, Hebei and Zhejiang.

WeChat found that younger generations, those born in the 1980s and 1990s, make up the majority of hongbao senders.

Tencent did not launch an advance marketing campaign for this year's red packet activity.

WeChat President Zhang Xiaolong says it should not directly be involved in too many festive occasions because it is essentially a tool.

Zhang also says that the mission of promoting WeChat Spring Festival red packets had already been completed in the past few years, including working with the Spring Festival gala show of the China Central Television.

Apart from the red packets, WeChat stickers specially designed for the Spring Festival and video calls have also become two major ways to express people's wishes to their friends and relatives.

shijing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 02/10/2017 page29)