No white woman appropriated the Chinese custom of giving lucky money (“lai see” in my husband’s Cantonese-speaking family) as fast as I did when I married Andy. All my debutante mother’s admonitions against giving money as a gift? Gone the second I realized that a pretty red envelope with gold designs was the perfect way to class up cash.
Cash is much more practical than gift cards. You can spend cash on anything, or save it. But gift cards? There’s NO WAY you ever spend the exact amount on the gift card. Corporations profit from expired cards, damaged cards, unredeemed balances, and sometimes fees. Starbucks, for example, gets about 10% of its revenue from unredeemed cards (from everyone except my husband and Coffee Kate). Stick it to corporate overlords and give cash instead!
I have countless nieces and nephews (thanks to over a dozen siblings, half-siblings, step-siblings, ex-step-siblings from various parental units’ divorces and marriages) who get lucky money on their birthdays. Our son Dalton has lobbied for cash gifts since he learned what money was (age 3). Dalton’s friends and coaches, even the non-Asian ones, learned to look forward to seeing red when they open a greeting card.
I buy my red envelopes in bulk. Yes, I know that most actual Chinese moms, like my MIL Sunny, get them for free from the bank when withdrawing cash for Lunar New Year or weddings or birthdays (stamped with the bank’s logo, of course, BUT IN GOLD). Back when Andy and I got married, however, our bank didn’t have red envelopes. I bought a variety of designs online: the nieces on the swim team got fish, the nephew who demanded orange juice got oranges, and the nephew who loved pink got red and pink peonies. I even splurged on some bigger, more rigid envelopes for weddings (the better to keep shiny new bills crisp and unbent).
While red envelopes haven’t gone mainstream in California (yet), there’s a Hawaiian custom that has: graduation leis. I’d never seen a graduation lei on the East Coast, but when I got my MFA in Los Angeles, flower leis were everywhere. Since then, high school graduations have morphed into a lei arms race in California. There are real flower leis, fake flower leis, candy leis, money leis, and even Happy Meal leis.
I’ve been at graduations where the leis are piled so high all you can see are the graduate’s eyes. Not one to miss out on the fun, I created a lucky money lei by braiding red yarn and gold ribbon, punching holes in red envelopes (with cashed tucked inside), and then attaching them to the lei with artificial daisies. (Then I warn the recipients to guard that lei with their life.)
When Andy’s nephew graduated, I had his lei all planned out: a kukui nut lei (to acknowledge his family’s history in Hawaii) with lucky money attached by red and gold ribbons. I sent Andy a reminder to leave work early and pick up cash on the way home. Lucky money is, ideally, the largest denomination of bills possible. As my husband is notoriously frugal, I texted him specifics: “I have 3 red envelopes on his lei, and, YES, each should be no less than a fifty!”
Andy brought home a bunch of crumpled twenties.
The ancestors wept.
The white wife insisted on stopping at an ATM that would let her choose hundreds. She may have also berated him the whole way there: “What is wrong with you? I’m not even Chinese and I know anything less than a hundred is shameful!”
Andy’s response was a shrug and, “It’s not like I got cash when I was growing up.”
“But when your mom gives Dalton lucky money, it’s always new, crisp hundred-dollar bills!”
“Crumpled twenties spend the same,” was all Andy said.
Until I returned from the ATM with a pile of Benjamin Franklins.
“How many hundreds are you giving him?!” he huffed, accelerating out of the parking lot with significantly more speed than necessary.
“You had your chance to get him fifties and you blew it.”
“But it’s only high school! And he’s got two younger siblings. You’re setting an expensive precedent.”
“Listen, Scrooge, I’m not giving him all of them. I had to get extra bills in case the ATM gave me old or ugly ones,” I explained. “See? This one is folded up in the corner. I can’t use that. And this one is creased! Only pristine bills make the cut.”
Andy remained horrified over the amount of lucky money in that lei.
Same as my southern ancestors, I expect.
But I like to think the Chinese ancestors were as pleased as our nephew.
