The best part of Chinese New Year (besides all the delicious food and snacks of course) is after a long day of mingling with family and friends and enjoying big feasts together, you can finally slip off into your own room, get changed into more comfortable home clothing, take out all the angpau that you've gathered with sweet well-wishes from the day and start opening them one by one, religiously counting every note to make sure that you don't miss out any. Every ringgit counts okay!
Once you're done counting, you put them all aside and decide to head into the kitchen again to eat some (more) CNY goodies. There, you encounter your parents already sitting at the table munching away. Of course, they knew you'd already did the calculations, so they asked you how much you gained in angpau from relatives. It doesn't stop there, they go even deeper and specifically ask how much a certain relative gave you. The next day, your siblings do the same - you're glad to know they received about the same as you. On the weekend, your friends ask you too, but you don't share the exact amount, just a range from here to there - they're still shocked though. On Monday at work, your colleagues ask you too - you take it as a joke and shrug it off.
Here comes the discussion if the total amount of angpau we receive should be a sensitive topic, so taboo that it can be considered as scandalous as discussing our salaries? In the age of wage transparency, is angpau transparency a thing that should be normalised? Sure it can be a rather uncomfortable topic for some, but is it something as questionable to be discussed about as our salaries?
There are different contexts as to why a person would even ask to know - parents want to know if they're giving out ‘fair market value’, siblings want to know if they missed out any angpau compared to you (relatives usually give about the same unless there's bias involved or different economical needs), friends and colleagues usually just ask as a form of conversation carrier. Either way, it's up to your judgment completely if you would like to share how much you received, or not at all. Anyways, the topic is not so consistent as our salaries - after Chap Goh Mei, you'll never hear about this again throughout the year.
In a way, it's a good time to circle back and remember that all angpau received is a token of good blessings from the giver, and as a recipient, we should be grateful for any amount given. As they say, it's the thought that counts - and we can be sure that everyone is fair in their giving. The total amount of angpau received between others is not a competition, and even if we did receive the biggest or smallest cumulative amount, it's not something to be gloated over or complained about. It's all about the blessings to have a wonderful year ahead, which we will have regardless of dollars and cents.
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