"red packets" is a common phrase in written English, referring to decorative packets containing money given as gifts or donations during holidays and celebrations.
For example, you might say, "At the Chinese New Year celebration, everyone received red packets filled with crisp yen notes."
Doctors expect red packets of cash for performing operations.
In Georgia's Congressional offices in Washington, visitors find red packets of peanuts in bowls by the door.
In fact, only people who are not married receive the red packets of money (hong bak) and only those who are married give them out.
One marketing strategy that does feel appropriate is when labels hand out specially branded red packets to high-spending customers – these decorative envelopes hold a cultural importance that will never disappear.
After trying military threats to intimidate the island into reunification, for the past decade under President Hu Jintao, China has offered financial incentives and increased trade to encouraged re-unification, dubbed by some "hongbao" diplomacy, a reference to the Chinese custom of giving red packets with money on special occasions like weddings.
Given the multifarious nature of the Chinese language, choices have to be made, and some Chinese-Americans might be disappointed to know that millions of children are about to be told to call red packets — the envelopes used for gifts of money at new year — ya sui qian rather than hong bao or ang pao.
One of my Chinese friends, who also happens to be a buyer for a well-known department store in Beijing, said to me: "Who wants to walk around dressed up like a lai see fung [a "red packet" in Cantonese]?
Sitting in her West 135th Street apartment, Marina Aguilera held a cup of hot tea in one hand and a small blue and red packet of tablets in the other.
Open up the folded red packet.
Fold the red packet in half.
Do not cut the red packet in half, just halfway.
