The Chinese Red Packet

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!

Weird Things We've Encountered 4: Chinese Door Games

Most of the other posts I've made in the WTWE series have been relatively interesting and about certain things you wouldn't necessarily know if you weren't also planning a civil ceremony in Australia in place of your original plan to do it in Singapore. This one, though, does kind of shine the spotlight on the utter weirdness of traditional wedding "games", with which I'm sure most of you have had some experience.

Let me touch briefly on Chinese wedding games. They're called "door games", which are typically played between the bridesmaids and the groomsmen when the groom comes to pick up the bride to whisk her off to the ceremony. It's a lot of teasing and silliness where the bridesmaids try to prevent the groom from entering the bride's home, where the bride, fully dressed and ready to go, is stashed away in a room somewhere.

It's a way for the groom to demonstrate how committed he and his groomsmen are to getting past the "trials" and "tests" set forth by the bridesmaids to be able to take the bride. It's also a way for the bridesmaids to demonstrate how much they love their bride by not letting her go without requiring the suitor prove his worthiness to them.

The games themselves are anything from doing x number of push-ups to waxing the groomsmen's legs. A pretty common game is to make the groom eat something super sweet, something super spicy, super sour, and super bitter; this is meant to represent how a marriage can be all 4 of those things and to see if the groom can stomach them. An acquaintance's bridesmaids had set up the front lawn of her house as the set of a quiz show, where the final prize was the bride.

That game they play with the business card on Clueless? Suck and blow? Where you have to pass a business card from one person to the next using only your mouth? Another popular one.

And of course there's always bringing a hoard of hongbao (the Chinese red envelopes) stuffed with cash and just buying the bride off the bridesmaids. Lazier and a bit more capitalist, sure, but efficient.

Things can get overboard really easily, and you're only limited by the imagination and commitment of each member of the bridal party. It's essentially the Chinese version of the hens' or bucks' party, just on a smaller and (usually) less debauched scale. I do think it's a cool way for the bridal party to spend some time together before the wedding and to alleviate the anxieties of the day, but I do also think that because it only involves your bridal party, it can be a bit exclusive.

While this sounds really fun, logistically it's just not going to pan out for us, not least because it's a bit much for just my sister to plan and do on her own when she's not even in the same country! More importantly, there's a lot of commentary to be had about gender and culture and the way these are represented in the games. I get that the games are meant to be in good fun, but that doesn't mean I have to want them or like them if I don't approve of the more subversive message the whole tradition sends.

A Magical Place Called Taobao

Growing up, my English was pretty terrible; I was actually in an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) class up until the age of 9 or 10 in Hong Kong. My parents made me watch Sesame Street on TV at home to improve my English.

As we began moving around every few years to a new city and country, I got more use out of the English side of things. In many aspects it's an achievement of which I am proud, not least because I know I well outpace many native speakers in vocabulary and the rules of grammar. But sometimes, dependent on context, it's also a deep-seated and secret shame, because it came at great cost to my Chinese.

---

SIDEBAR: I would totally just watch a bunch of Cantonese cartoons until I heard the elevator clanging up and the lock turning, then quickly switch to Sesame Street and act like I'd been watching it all along. I'm pretty sure my parents knew.

---

When we lived in the Philippines, we had a Mandarin tutor come around once a week. I hated it, but my parents made me stick with it. When we moved to Beijing after 5 years in the Philippines, well, let me put it this way: I still haven't apologised to my mum and dad. I went on to use Mandarin regularly in Beijing and years later in Shanghai when I started working.

Then, I moved to Perth. Needless to say, I have not used much Chinese - Cantonese or Mandarin - at all except in very specific situations. It's a weird feeling, knowing that an important skill that makes me a huge part of who I am is slipping away, bit by bit. It got to the point where I became flustered when trying to read Chinese, because I was starting to see words I have known in the past, but can't seem to pronounce anymore.

Now that's a lot of context to set up what is really just an amusing anecdote. I have been trying to find a variety of items for the wedding and was looking on eBay and Etsy for cheap but quality items. I'd found a few that matched most of my criteria, but nothing that ticked all the boxes. A few days after beginning this search, it hit me: I was thinking too small. I was constraining myself to English search engines.

There's this place - I don't know if you've guessed what it's called yet - known as "Taobao" (rhymes with "bow" as in "lowering your upper torso"). It is essentially China's version of eBay and Amazon all smashed together, and it connects you with the same suppliers that sell all the stuff you buy everywhere else that's Made in China. And let me put it this way: there is so much stuff on Taobao. You can find almost anything for any price, including, as I recently found out, virtual girlfriends.

In one specific example, I found an item listed for about AUD1.50 on eBay. I found the exact same item (same photos, same zoom-in photos, same specs, same city of origin) on Taobao for AUD0.50 each!

The downside, of course, is that you have to be able to read Chinese. The former of which, much to my delight, has been coming back to me over the past few days. I did struggle at first, but then you get used to seeing the text and something about being immersed in it just brings everything else out, too. It's almost like warming up before a workout. I started out reading a word here and there to get the gist to suddenly realising that I'd been reading everything on the page for the past hour and hadn't even noticed!

Something interesting I've noticed is that the product reviews on Taobao are hilarious. Chinese reviewers will never, ever give something "5 stars" or say it's "perfect" or "awesome" unless it really, genuinely is. More often than not, the good stuff gets reviewed as "satisfactory", "not bad", and "adequate". It's all done with as much brevity as possible, too - rarely will you find any review longer than two sentences of text, even if the product is horrible in quality. Plus, they write like they talk, and then I hear it in my brain, and then I smile a bit.

So, basically, being Chinese is pretty awesome. Not only am I going to get stuff for the wedding sourced at a fraction of the cost from English-only websites, I also get to flex my atrophied Chinese muscles. I get to feel at least a little bit in touch with where I came from, even if it's the most superficial way possible. And, on an emotional note, I really cannot express how valuable that feeling is through this whole process.

The Tea Ceremony

Lots of folks have been asking me about the Chinese Tea Ceremony and its significance, and I've been totally happy to answer any and all questions thus associated. I briefly considered adding a link to some website about this tradition when I had a thought: no two families do this quite the same way. As cultural groups are not internally homogenous, neither is the observation of their traditions. So here's a little blog-style post about how we'll be doing it.

The tea ceremony is a component of a Chinese wedding, but is wholly separate to the actual wedding ceremony itself. That is, the wedding is about uniting the bride and groom, where their relationship and formation of a new family takes centre stage. The tea ceremony is instead about each of their own families.

Traditionally, the ceremony is meant to cover two main things:

1. To honour and show respect to each of the families, particularly those more "senior" to the bride or groom; and
2. To welcome each of the newlyweds into the other's family as a daughter or son, acknowledging the change in the status of their relationships.

I put "senior" in quotes because seniority is a big deal in Chinese culture; certain individuals are to be offered respect first and foremost, dictated by their relationship to you, their age, and their gender. That we are having our ceremony in Singapore is a non-traditional way to acknowledge my grandmother's seniority, being the lone surviving grandparent between our families. That Blake's older sister is part of the ceremony while my younger sister is not is another example of how seniority works.

Depending on what kind of Chinese you are, there are plenty of variations between venues and service order, with the one constant being that, well, yes, there is tea involved. The newlyweds are to pour and serve tea to their families, starting with one side of the family (in order of seniority) and then across to the other side of the family. Which family goes first is a matter of cultural variation; some families serve the bride's family first to signify her departure from her family, while others serve the groom's family first because the groom's family traditionally pays for the wedding.

(Hence the impasse in which we found ourselves, where Blake's culture dictates that the bride's family pays for everything.)

The bride's "departure from her family" bit is to do with old-school Chinese culture, where the wedding ceremony usually starts with the groom coming to the bride's house and "taking" her away to get married. In stark comparison, in most Western weddings the bride is "given away" by her father. Both traditions totally stem from perverse patriarchal origins, but I'm finding that I have to balance smashing the patriarchy with not pissing off my parents or future in-laws.

We've decided to serve my family first and Blake's family second, as a deference to my grandmother's seniority and also the fact that I currently live in Perth.

Another variation is when the tea ceremony occurs. In our family (and the vast majority of Cantonese families, from what I understand), the tea ceremony traditionally takes place after the wedding, usually within a couple of days of the wedding itself; the newlyweds will pay a visit to one family's house and then the other family's house, to pour and serve tea separately. There are some Chinese cultural groups who do the tea ceremony before the wedding (usually the morning of), and some who do it during the wedding, usually just after the couple has been married.

We've decided to do the tea ceremony a week before our Perth (and legal) wedding, serving tea to both families one after the other on the same day at the same place. This hits a lot of notes for me, not least because it is important to me that Blake's family knows and acknowledges where I come from, at least in part. Often I feel that the ease of my adjustment to living to Perth is (unintentionally) taken for granted; I would like them to see my grandmother's house - one of the last remaining bastions of my upbringing that still holds meaning for me over my nomadic life.

That's not how most folks would do things, but eh, we're not most folks. As my parents like to tell me, some traditions are significant and meaningful, some of them are outdated and kind of dumb or done only for tradition's sake. The good news is that we get to choose which traditions fall into which category, because the creation of any new family means there's a new cultural variant on the board, which is kind of really super awesome.