Advertisement
Advertisement
Lunar New Year
Get more with myNEWS
A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you
Learn more
The line to receive red packets from Tencent CEO Pony Ma stretched around the company's HQ several times. Photo: Weibo

Queue stretches around building as Tencent boss hands out Lunar New Year bonuses personally

Adrian Wan
Tencent may have started a war for electronic red packets with other Chinese internet firms, but when it comes to handing out 'Lai See' to employees, the firm prefers the traditional approach. 
Thousands of employees of the Shenzhen-based technology giant queued up from the early hours of the morning for red envelopes (or hongbao) being handed out by Pony Ma Huateng, chairman and chief executive, according to photos posted on the company's official Weibo account.
The firm - which operates hugely popular instant messaging apps WeChat and QQ - returned to work after the Lunar New Year holidays this morning, and a line for the red envelopes began forming around 8am. Photos showed the line was so long that it spiralled around the Tencent HQ in Nanshan District several times.

The line led through the building to the office of Ma, who was pictured dressed in a red traditional Chinese jacket and handing out the packets to his employers.

“Ma was born in Guangdong province, and it is a Guangdong tradition for workers to get red packets from their bosses,” an employee told the South China Morning Post.

“Some colleagues arrived several hours early for this. It is something that puts people in a good mood on the first day at work,” she said.

Ma is thought to have given out around 5,000 red packets this morning, according to the staff member. Other managers also gave red packets to their staff.

Compared with many of the electronic red envelopes people have splashed out on online, those that Tencent staff received were not so generous, with staff reporting getting between 10 yuan to 100 yuan.

The Tencent employee said staff did not care how much was in the packets however.

“Many of us waited for a long time in line to get a red envelope from Ma because we don’t always get to see him in the office, and it’s nice to do it at the start of the New Year,” she said.

3.27 billion e-hongbao were sent between February 18 and 23 via WeChat, with more than one billion sent on New Year's Eve alone, according to the company's official Weibo account. 

Residents of Guangdong and Zhejiang sent the most digital hongbao, followed by Beijing, Jiangsu Province and Shanghai in fifth place, Tencent said.

WeChat introduced electronic red envelopes last year to great fanfare. This year, several other companies, including Sina and Baidu, followed suit.

“Lucky money” payments worth 1 yuan were the most popular choice overall, with more than 19.5 million 1-yuan e-hongbao sent during the holiday, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Post