紅包 hong bao amounts for New Year's party

Hi all,

Oh the grief and agony of 紅包!

This will be the first year that my wife and I have been invited to a CNY party by a Taiwanese friend of ours. We were of course careful to ask how many kids would be there and what amounts to give so we’d know how many 紅包 to prepare.

We were a bit suprised by the answer we got though - She said there’d be one child, and that we should give NT$1200 in her 紅包. However, she also added that we’re supposed to give each of our friend’s parents a 紅包, each with NT$2000 inside.

Frankly, we’d never heard of giving money to parents on CNY and this seems a bit steep to us. We don’t want to be bad guests, and probably could afford the extra expense, but our friend admits she’s a bit out of touch with respect to this custom.

So, does anyone have any advice on this one? It’s driving us nuts.

Thanks!

[quote=“terence”]She said there’d be one child, and that we should give NT$1200 in her 紅包. However, she also added that we’re supposed to give each of our friend’s parents a 紅包, each with NT$2000 inside.

Frankly, we’d never heard of giving money to parents on CNY and this seems a bit steep to us. We don’t want to be bad guests, and probably could afford the extra expense, but our friend admits she’s a bit out of touch with respect to this custom.

So, does anyone have any advice on this one? It’s driving us nuts.

Thanks![/quote]

That’s waaaaaay too much. My wife only gives 200NT to her nephews and nieces and 1500NT to her parents.

If you’ve never met the parents of these partygoers before, I wouldn’t give them too much at all.

If it’s your intention to give a hong bao to me you should stuff it with the blue colored banknotes as many as can fit … :slight_smile:

[quote=“JAS”][quote=“terence”]She said there’d be one child, and that we should give NT$1200 in her 紅包. However, she also added that we’re supposed to give each of our friend’s parents a 紅包, each with NT$2000 inside.

Frankly, we’d never heard of giving money to parents on CNY and this seems a bit steep to us. We don’t want to be bad guests, and probably could afford the extra expense, but our friend admits she’s a bit out of touch with respect to this custom.

So, does anyone have any advice on this one? It’s driving us nuts.

Thanks![/quote]

That’s waaaaaay too much. My wife only gives 200NT to her nephews and nieces and 1500NT to her parents.

If you’ve never met the parents of these partygoers before, I wouldn’t give them too much at all.[/quote]

I agree. The most the wife gives out is 600, and this seems to be a number the whole family agrees on to give so most of it gets given back to our daughter anyway. Usually if there are dinner guests the mother-in-law will give 200 to them and repeatedly say 意思,意思,意思,意思… yisi, yisi, when they refuse, meaning that it is just a token and the envelope means more than what’s inside.

She does give her own parents considerably more but then for the next year we dump our daughter on them whenever we have something to do.

If I am going anywhere to dinner I usually prepare a load of 200 紅包 just in case there are unexpected guests there who start handing them out. Nobody opens them right there anyway, you just poke em in your pocket and wait until you’re in the bathroom to have a peek. :slight_smile:

Hi,

These are all great ideas, thank you!

Sadly, it seems her somewhat strict father has decreed that he’d rather not go if our friend invites us, so I guess we’ll just have to wait until next year. :frowning:

(Yes, seriously. No, I don’t know why. We’re really rather well-mannered and speak pretty decent Chinese for a pair of 老外s. sigh)

Thanks!

Since nobody’s mentioned it in this thread so far - Whatever you do, don’t give any amount involving a 4 (400, 440, 4,000 etc.) And don’t stick your chopsticks in your rice bowl.