压岁钱水涨船高 已经成了经济负担

Money worries as red packets get fatter

 

 Shanghai Daily, February 13, 2013

Du Tianjiang's wife Liang Huizhen gives a red packet to the grandson of their friend in Du's restaurant in Xinglong, a town of Wanning City in south China's Hainan Province, Jan. 24, 2012. [Photo: Xinhua]

Red packets traditionally contained a small sum of money given to children during the Chinese New Year.

But unlike in southern China, such as Guangdong Province and Hong Kong, where people mostly give several tens of yuan for children during the New Year holiday, red packets in most parts of China, including Shanghai, now see large sums of money exchanging hands.

"I'm always amazed to see how generous people are when giving red packets here. The amount is sometimes 50 times what we are used to giving," said Mark Yip, a Hong Kong resident visiting relatives in Shanghai. "I wonder if they really earn that much each month."

A report by TNS, a market research firm, found people on the Chinese mainland on average allocate 3,668 yuan (US$588.8) as red packet money for the Chinese New Year. An average red packet for family members contains 1,323 yuan, and those for relatives average 893 yuan, according to the report.

Daniel Tao, a Shanghai white collar worker, said his two-year-old daughter had received more than 10,000 yuan so far this year, mostly from relatives and friends.

"She really got a good harvest," Tao said, adding that grandpa, grandma, uncles and aunties had each given the toddler 1,000 yuan.

"But we also have to give out a lot in return," he said. "It's almost a meaningless exchange."

For those who are just starting to work and don't have any children, the problem is that they have little money to give away. Some web users complain that they have to spend all their annual bonus on red packets and taking relatives to nice restaurants.

"It seems that 500 yuan is the minimum amount of money for children of relatives," an online post said. "The tradition of giving red packets will cost all my bonus in a week."

Web users were outraged after Xinhua news agency cited a retired government official lamenting about the large sum his child used to receive when he was in his post.

"My child used to receive tens of thousand of yuan during the Chinese New Year, some times people give 10,000 yuan in a packet," Xinhua quoted him as saying. "But now, none would visit me except for the relatives."

There have long been proposing to cut the size of red packets, but reality seems to be against it.

An online poll conducted by Tencent found that 40 percent of web users would allocate three months' salary for red packets, and 70 percent expected to spend more every year.