Life in Hong Kong: Red Envelopes

As a part of the Chinese New Year celebration, red envelopes are handed out. The red envelopes contain "new" money. It is very important that the money is new. All of the local banks make sure that they have plenty of new bills on hand in all denominations for their customers. These envelopes are given to any employees, service personal that you encounter frequently, neighbors, kids, etc. They are to be handed out during a two week period encompassing Chinese New Year. They are given as a wish for a "healthy and prosperous" new year.

The girls and I were out of town over the Chinese New Year break, so PJ and Dave were in charge of handing out the envelopes. We gave them to everyone working here at our complex. Dave said they were all extremely grateful. He and PJ said that the maintenance people were especially thankful. Being new to this I'm not sure how many people give out the envelopes to everyone like that. Dave took some envelopes to hand out to the employees he encountered at the American Club. He brought 6 envelopes with him thinking that he would hand them to the 3 people working in the parking garage and the 3 people working at the front desk. As he pulled out the envelopes to hand to the parking attendants the head guy was so excited he called all of the other attendants up. Thankfully there were only 6!

As CFO, Dave was also responsible for handing out all of the envelopes at work. His assistant had to keep a list for him and she would check off people as he handed out the envelopes. At the end of the two week celebration Dave's office had a big celebration. As a part of the celebration there were drummers and a dragon making the rounds of the office. Lettuce was hung from the doors of the executives and the dragon would come and take the lettuce and then dance in the executive's office. Dave had to put a red envelope in the dragon's mouth for good luck.

There were many Chinese New Year celebrations around town. Because I was not here, I do not have pictures from any of the celebrations to share with you. I do have a few pictures leading up to the New Year. Places all around town were decorated with signs, flowers and small "orange" (I believe kumquat) trees.