Witnessing through the Gospel and Chinese Tradition
Happy Lunar New Year everyone! The day has finally passed, I hope everyone is spending good quality time with their family and friends. May God bless you all in the year of the pig! For my Chinese friends, this topic is a common tradition in China, but my American or other friends might not be familiar with it. If you are already familiar with it, perhaps this idea will inspire my Christian Chinese friends. 
In Chinese traditions during the lunar New year, families with children are supposed to give other children in the family like grandsons, granddaughters, nieces or nephews little packets of lucky money. In Chinese they call it 红包 or hóngbāo. The little red envelopes usually have some traditional Chinese greetings for good luck in the new year and some money. Depending on who gives the hong bao, it could range from 10-100RMB or $1.50-16 USD. 
As you can see , we have a lot of different kinds of Hong bao. We actually ordered some hong bao with Bible verses on them but we waited too late in the holiday to try and order them. So instead we had a lot of little evangelism cards we got from Hong Kong and stuffed them in with the lucky money. 
We figured this would be another great way to utilize a traditional Chinese custom and again share the love of Christ with others. The only downside is that these cards are written in Traditional Chinese characters and not Simplified (used in mainland China). I wish we could find or make some cute ones like these using Simplified characters. A lot of mainlanders can still read these cards though, so that’s a blessing.
Either way, it’s good to remember your family and friends during this time of the year, but also make sure to share God’s gift with those that you love! This is a great chance to do so and show them that Christianity is not a western religion, but it’s a religion for everyone and can definitely be a Chinese religion.
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