How Chinese New Year is going digital

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Time.news OF SHANGHAI. In China, major payment apps have seized the occasion of the Spring Festival to create 100% digital gifts.

By Marie Fourier (in Shanghai)

> (red envelopes) digital by WeChat mobile messaging application. ” title=”A mobile phone user gets< hongbaos >> (red envelopes) digital by WeChat mobile messaging application. “/>

A mobile phone user obtains digital ‘hongbaos’ (red envelopes) by mobile messaging app WeChat.
© Da Qing/Imaginechina via AFP

Published on 01/21/2023 at 2:00 p.m.

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EWhat if we imagined a totally digitized Christmas? Not the capon of course, but everything else. A fir tree flashing on the screen and a December 25 in the morning when our sleepy eyes would open their presents on a smartphone. China is not far from passing the course, with a phenomenon that is growing more and more every year: the exchange of red envelopes at Chinese New Year by interposed telephone.

As the Middle Kingdom begins a week off, fixed for the whole country, during which even the administrations close, hundreds of millions of Chinese are on the road this weekend to reunite with their families, after three years of travel constantly complicated by the pandemic. They will finally be able to celebrate, as it should, the Spring Festival, the most common name…