The Genius of the Hong Bao

The Chinese are genius, they truly are. As far as I can tell, the Chinese got this. The Indians and Malays adapted this. I could be wrong and would be happy to hear if you know better on the origins of this amazing idea!

I would guess that most of our readers are Asians so they are familiar with the idea of giving a red envelope filled with cash for just about any occasion – weddings, birth of child, birthday, celebrations, acing an exam, just for fun. It saves the guesswork behind what the recipient would like and if the recipient already has something as the gift you are buying which makes the gift redundant.

Let me illustrate the genius behind this with reference to CocoJr#1’s 4th birthday party this year. This year, I included a note in the invite to ask for some thematic gifts we know he would like, the gift of an experience or monetary gifts as we have limited space for toys in the modern day Singapore condo. I decided to do away with the initial pai seh-ness and just ask for it, thinking in the long run we would thankful for it. So while we did get some toys, the bulk of it was cash so it was a nice balance. With the cash, we could teach CocoJr#1 some basics on savings and growing the money and choosing to spend some on experiences such as wall-climbing.

The toys that we received were very nice and we did let CocoJr#1 open some of it and play with it as well however we hit an issue with some of the toys which is inherent in the world of gift-giving:

1. We received a gift that we would never use. It was one that a child would use at a sleepover and we have decided that our kids won’t be doing sleepovers.
2. We received a gift that we already received as a gift before. We used it before, didn’t like it so much and sold it and now received it again. It was actually hilarious!
3. Some toys were just not something we would have bought or see the purpose of, haha. CocoJr#1 is 4, he would play with anything and everything.
4. The problem of too many gifts! In our household, which we try to keep with minimal things (it’s a constant struggle), there’s cupboard spaces just filled with unused gifts.

So while it is fun to receive some gifts and we didn’t want to completely rob him of that experience by strictly asking for monetary gifts, we thought it was a good balance for him to get all 3 kinds of gifts. The monetary gifts that we received, on the other hand, was great.

There are perks to receiving gifts though:

1. Sometimes you receive some amazing gifts that you would not have ever thought of buying for yourself / have not ever come across
2. Sometimes the gift is absolutely something you love that shows how much thought the gift giver put into it and knows you

Gift giving is fun although I’ll admit, we are usually stuck for ideas however we do embrace the challenge of thinking of the right gift  because good friends and family deserve a well thought out gift. By that, I mean we pull our hair out thinking of what is right and go through 10 different ideas then find something that we hope would hit the jackpot. Hong baos, on the other hand, is just as fun and also very practical! Arguably it does take the personalisation out of it but it allows for the recipient to get something that they would absolutely love, so it’s actually a perfect gift sometimes. There’s variation to the hong bao method that we have adapted as well. For my family, we tell each other what we want and we then receive it as a gift.

Your turn now, what is your preference and why?