You may have thought that in a world of tweets and emoticons, where slipshod and snappy trumps elegant and erudite, handwritten letters would have had their day.

But don't throw away that fountain pen, inkwell and blotting paper just yet. And keep hold of those postage stamps, too.

It seems that as most of us float with the technological zeitgeist, a large group of people is swimming against the current, treasuring what they regard as the special way that handwritten letters link people, and they are doing their darnedest to ensure that what apparently began with hieroglyphics says with us for a few millennia yet.

"I enjoy writing and sharing my ideas," wrote Ren Shuangjiang recently on Douban, a popular user-based cultural and social website in China.

"I'm keen on making good pen pals with whom I can communicate using paper and pen, and sharing my true feelings through words on the paper."