Chinese yuppies shun holidays over "hong bao"

BEIJING, Feb 25 (Reuters) Some young Chinese professionals are seeing red over the increasing amounts of cash their relatives expect them to bring home for the holidays each year, according to local media reports.

The official Xinhua news agency yesterday said on Saturday the tradition of exchanging ''hong bao'', or red envelopes stuffed with cash, during the Lunar New Year was becoming a serious financial burden for some office workers in China's big cities.

Whereas the envelopes were traditionally given by older, married relatives to children as a way of wishing them well for the new year, many young professionals were now expected to give them to both younger and older relatives, it said filled with ever larger amounts of cash.

Many migrant workers regularly send money home to their families to support them, but the red envelopes are a separate phenomenon.

Xinhua cited one office worker in Shanghai as saying he had feigned illness to avoid returning home for the holidays this year, so he would not have to dish out the equivalent of more than a month's salary -- around 4,000 yuan -- in gifts.

Many young people had also expressed frustration online over their relatives' increasing expectations, Xinhua said.

''I'd rather stay at home than visit relatives. I spent 5,000 yuan on red envelopes,'' it quoted one female office worker as saying in an Internet chat room.

REUTERS SY KN0832