WITH the Spring Festival coming, Sheng Chongming, a local housewife, has started preparing her red envelopes. She has prepared 10 red envelopes, five with 100 yuan (US$12), and five with 200 yuan (US$24). All the banknotes in the envelopes are brand new.

"The 100-yuan envelopes are for the children of not-so-close relatives and the 200-yuan ones are for the younger generation of close relations," said the middle-aged housewife.

But she is still worried that the 10 envelopes may not be enough because at the previous Spring Festival she had also prepared 10 envelopes but needed 12 in the end.

"Originally it was a happy thing to do, but now providing red envelopes during the Spring Festival has become a real burden to me. When children say 'Happy New Year', you should give them money as a gift according to Chinese tradition," she said. "But gradually it becomes a kind of debt of gratitude. Even my own child gets the money, but I should think of other ways of doing it or people would take you for a stingy woman."

Exchange of cash and favour

The Chinese New Year red envelope, also called yasuiqian, is money given to children for the Chinese New Year as a gift and has a tradition going back hundreds of years.

The word sui means year just as the word nian and it is also has the same pronunciation as evil spirits in Chinese, so yasui means to crack down on evil spirits. The money is expected to keep children safe for the whole year.

Adults should wrap the money in red paper and put it under the children's pillows after they have gone to sleep on New Year's Eve. If evil spirits try to hurt the children, they can use the money to bribe their way to safety.

Until the 1990s, the amount of money in the red envelopes was only around 10 yuan for each child. But with the passing of the years, the figure has rocketed.

"I still remember I only received 5 or 10 yuan in red envelopes, but now I should have to pay the children at least 100 yuan," said Jenny Xu, a local young woman.

Once her boss brought his child to work before the Spring Festival and many of her colleagues gave money. "I also gave 500 yuan (US$60). I had no other choice - she is the daughter of my boss and my colleagues all tried to be the first to give the red envelop," she complained.

But she is a little more relaxed this year, because she had her own baby last year. "So this time, my baby can earn red envelopes for me after I have sent out so much money," she joked.

Xu will never be a parent who scores a rich harvest in red envelopes. The luckiest children are those belonging to people with authority or power.

Another woman who asked to be anonymous said one of her relatives, who is a general manager, received more than 20,000 yuan (US$2,420) in red envelopes last Spring Festival. All the money was sent as yasuiqian to his daughter. "But everyone knows it was all aimed at the father," the woman said.

Trouble triggers

Not everyone can have the same good luck as Miss Xu who had a baby in time for the Spring Festival. The necessity of packing money into red envelopes puts more and more pressure on people today and can even lead to mental problems in some of them, according to the Nanfang Dushi Bao newspaper.

A report said the number of people visiting psychologists in hospitals at this time of the year is 30 per cent higher than at other times. In some of the larger hospitals, each day there are 50 to 60 people attending the psychiatric section.

About 80 per cent of the depressed patients said they were worried, disturbed or even disgusted at the coming Spring Festival. Experts have called the symptoms "New Year Phobia".

Apart from the pressure of work, crowded traffic and endless banquets for the Lunar New Year, yasuiqian is now also listed as one cause of mental depression.

Liu, a young woman who graduated from college last year, does not earn a high salary but she has found that she has to prepare more than 2,000 yuan (US$242) for the children of relatives in Hunan Province. That's almost twice her monthly salary and she has felt frustrated all the time lately.

Another group of people who have to worry about yasuiqian is family elders. Most elders over 70 years have several children. When they were young, they were encouraged to have more babies to help the country which was then in great need of manpower. So the result today is that they have many grandchildren who are all waiting for yasuiqian.

Fang Yue'e is in her eighties and has eight children and more than 10 grandchildren. She has to give them 100 yuan each, but all the income of a granny without a job comes from the pension and gifts from her children and this totals only about 900 yuan (US$110) per month.

"At the end of the year, I return all my savings to the children," the old woman said. "But it is still a happy thing for me, my neighbours all admire me for having so many of the younger generation."

Educators' warnings

The question of whether yasuiqian really benefits children has always caused a lot of disputes. Chen Ayi, a teacher of a local middle school, said she didn't support giving money to children.

"At the beginning of the new spring term, most students will ask about how much yasuiqian they received," Chen said. "Children from rich families feel pride in telling others what they got and they compare the amounts with each other and sometimes invite classmates to have a meal while the children of poverty-stricken families with laid-off parents are very embarrassed."

As a teacher she also worries about the behaviour of students at this time of the year because some mischievous boys with money in their hands will go to Net bars to play computer games. "It is a waste of time and money and I don't allow them to go there, but every year, there are some who can't resist the temptation," she said.

Lately, the city has encouraged people not to give money as a New Year gift but instead, to give books or other student materials.

Local bookstores also offer New Year gift books. But, obviously, books can't compete with red envelopes, no matter whether it's children or adults.