While many people received a barrage of goodwill text messages during the Chinese New Year holiday, a factory boss in Zhuhai, in South China's Guangdong Province, was spammed with some 50 disturbing and threatening messages.

The 37-year-old man, surnamed Hu, received the first disturbing text message on February 18, the first day of China's Lunar New Year, the Chinese-language newspaper Zhujiang Evening News reported.

It said: "You will be very poor this year to beg your food. All of your family will be knocked down to death by vehicles and none of you could even have a complete body".

Hu, who initially thought the message was sent to his phone by mistake, soon became concerned after he received more of them over the next few days.

He made numerous attempts to call the sender but the person refused to answer the phone every time.

Hu runs a garment factory in Gongbei District with his wife.

He reported the case to local police, who are still trying to establish a motive.

Police can request a mobile phone operator cut the service in unique cases.

Although Hu's new year was let down by messages of bad luck, for others, text messages even ones wishing good luck were just simply annoying.

Cao Cheng, who runs a design company, received over 100 text messages from friends and relatives in a single day.

"These messages had similar contents," Cao said. "Many messages were copied from one person to another and I have to take the trouble, and make the time to answer all of them."

The Chinese tradition to give blessings for the New Year includes visiting other people's homes or calling them.

But text messaging seems to have become a popular, convenient, if somewhat impersonal way of sending best wishes.

According to the Guangdong branch of China Mobile, one of the two mobile phone operators in China, its users sent out about 2.56 billion text messages over the holiday period 26 per cent up from a year before a new record.

The Guangdong branch of China Unicom, the other mobile phone operator, said it recorded some 480 million pieces of short messages during the same period.

Editor: Yan