There are lots of places on the internet where you can read about this staple of traditional Chinese culture, but why go to those far more scholarly and well-informed places when you can come here? It is a very visible aspect of my culture and is generally associated with Chinese New Year, but it's also present across a range of important occasions including weddings, births, and graduations.

What I'm referring to here is the red envelope or red packet, which is called a variety of names in Chinese as well. The one I'll be using in this post is hongbao (紅包), which is Mandarin for, literally, "red bag". Another common name for it is lai see (利是), which is Cantonese. In Australia, it's common to hear it referred to as angpow, which is the Hokkien dialect pronunciation of hongbao.

Essentially, a hongbao represents good luck and prosperity and is bright red in colour for this reason. By giving someone a hongbao, you are wishing them well and the contents of the envelope are meant to be a measure of the sincerity of those well wishes.

The rules around who gives and who receives vary from region to region across any Chinese population in the world, but it's chiefly governed by seniority, in that the more senior give to the less senior. What typically defines seniority is age, relationship, and marital status. The older you are and the closer the relationship (i.e., parents or grandparents rather than friends or colleagues), the more you are expected to give. Married couples are traditionally considered to be of a "higher status" than unwed singles.

Seniority also sometimes determines what goes into a hongbao. Traditionally, they hold cash money (sometimes jewelry in the case of weddings), the amount of which is determined by a number of factors: occasion, relationship/seniority to the recipient, and venue. There are lots of unwritten rules around this sort of thing, which becomes even more tricky when you consider that each subgroup has different rules.

As an example, Singaporean culture has a laundry list of rules (SURPRISING NO ONE) surrounding the giving of wedding hongbao - or angpow, as they are locally called. Every financial year, angpow rates are released by wedding dinner venues all over the city. These are literally price lists of how much it would be appropriate to give the bride and groom in your angpow based on where the wedding dinner is being held - that is, how much it likely cost the bride/groom to host you. That amount is the "base" amount".

Then, from that base amount, the amount you give is calculated from there. If you're a very close friend or relative, you might give 150% of the base amount. Most guests will give just the base amount itself because it's polite. You give a bit less than the base amount if it's a weekday dinner or a lunch, but otherwise you wouldn't give less unless there's bad blood between you and the bride's/groom's families but have been invited out of obligation.

That's just Singapore. In mainland China, it's another set of highly variant and context-driven rules. If you've got people from work attending your wedding, your boss is expected to give you more in his/her hongbao than your other colleagues are. The more senior the boss, the more they are supposed to give.

Regardless of the subgroup, one thing is consistent across all of them: woe befall he/she who gives too little. Saving face and losing face are cornerstones across all Chinese cultures, and giving too little at a wedding could mean that you go from the inner circle to black sheep in the blink of an eye. It's a scary balancing act, too - if you give waaaaay more than expected, you're more likely to be deemed presumptuous of the relationship you have to the newlyweds rather than simply generous.

So, rather than the gift registries or Wishing Wells that are typical of Western weddings, the hongbao is the gift-giving aspect of a Chinese wedding. For family, hongbao are usually given during the Tea Ceremony rather than during the wedding, while everyone else gives it on being greeted by the bride and groom during the wedding. Suffice it to say, I'm so glad we're having a cross-cultural wedding, because it does mean we pretty much get to decide how we want to honour our respective cultures. Similar to how we're working the Tea Ceremony, we're pretty intent to do it our way.

We don't expect gifts, but we'll be combining our Wishing Well and the hongbao tradition in a pretty fun way. Guests who do want to give money to the Wishing Well will be able to do so, while others who aren't will also be able participate with no loss of face. I don't know that I can say much more than that without giving the surprise away.

Either way, if you are going to be joining us on the Big Day and are thinking of contributing to the Wishing Well, please don't worry about any fancy maths or obsess about the amount. The most important thing is that you're there celebrating with us!