Red envelope (hongbao)

The sui demon and other stories

Several stories explain the name, and they are told as legends. In the best known, as the Jincheng government feature retells it, a small demon called Sui (祟), with a black body and white hands, came out on New Year’s Eve to touch the foreheads of sleeping children; a child it touched fell into a high fever and was left simple. In Jiaxing, in Zhejiang, an old couple with a late-born son wrapped eight copper coins in red paper for him to play with and left them by his pillow when he fell asleep. When the demon reached for the boy, flashes of golden light drove it away: the eight coins were the Eight Immortals, guarding him in secret. The next year everyone copied the couple. The coins became yasuiqian, “money that holds down the sui”, because 祟 (the demon) and 岁 (the year, suì) sound alike.

The same feature gives two rival origins. In one, the Song emperor Shenzong gave a five-year-old boy, snatched by kidnappers on the night of the Lantern Festival and rescued at the palace gate, a gift of coins to calm his fright; in the other, palace women of the Tang tossed coins in games every spring, and when the New Year moved to the first day of the first month, the spring coins moved with it.

Lai see, lì xì, ang bao and white envelopes

Each place keeps the custom in its own way. In Hong Kong the Monetary Authority and the three note-issuing banks open two weeks of counters before the New Year to exchange new and “good-as-new” notes for lai see, from 3 to 16 February in 2026. Singapore’s Monetary Authority asks people to put used “Fit notes” in their hong baos instead of new ones; in a survey of 1,853 Chinese Singaporeans and permanent residents in 2025, two in three said they were open to receiving them. In Vietnam the scholar Phan Kế Bính (1875–1921) described in Việt Nam phong tục how descendants, after worshipping their ancestors, offered money and bowed twice to their grandparents and parents, who gave the children coins in return, the Vietnam News Agency notes; the red envelope, it says, is meant to pray for good luck and drive away evil spirits. Korea keeps New Year money without the red. At Seollal elders give money to children after the sebae, a deep bow to the elders, the Library of Congress notes, and Gao writes that it may come in white envelopes, because white in Korean culture stands for purity and new beginnings. Lion dance troupes are paid in red envelopes too.

Digital red envelopes

Tencent launched a “red envelope grabbing” feature on WeChat on 26 January 2014, the Global Times reported that February. Users could send money to one friend or put up a sum to be split at random among a group. Xinhua, citing Tencent, counted more than 40 million envelopes claimed between 30 January and 7 February, averaging 10 yuan each, and Alibaba’s Jack Ma reportedly called the feature a “Pearl Harbor attack” on his company’s Alipay. Gao records 14.2 billion WeChat hongbao transactions on the eve of the 2017 New Year and about 5.08 billion on the eve of 2024. In Vietnam e-wallets and banking apps offer e-lì xì, and a major provider counted more than 150 million sent over Tết 2025, Viet Nam News reported. Hong Kong’s Monetary Authority now encourages electronic lai see, which saves paper packets and banknotes.