Red envelopes for Lunar New Year lucky money redesigned for people who can’t read Chinese by artists in Canada so they are easy to understand

A Vancouver-based Chinese-Canadian decided to make lai see – red paper envelopes for ‘lucky money’ – easier to understand for those who can’t read Chinese

Mission: Red Pocket creator Kevin Li asked three designers to make Lunar New Year greetings fun and easy to learn through fresh, modern lai see envelope designs

Reading Time:3 minutes

Chinese-Canadian Kevin Li holds up three Mission: Red Pocket envelopes and his daughter Ava in Vancouver. He asked three designers to make Lunar New Year greetings fun and easy to learn through modern lai see designs. Photo: Kevin Li

Published: 7:45am, 21 Jan 2023Updated: 10:55am, 21 Jan 2023

Last September, Kevin Li started thinking about how he and his wife could pass on Chinese traditions to their daughter Ava, who would turn one that December.

“My wife and I made a plan [to] speak more Chinese at home because [Ava] can learn English [outside],” Li recently said on a radio show in Vancouver, Canada.

However, not even an hour into their plan, the couple had to fall back on their English, as they did not know enough Chinese – Li’s wife was born in Taiwan and moved to Vancouver when she was five, and Li himself is a second generation Chinese-Canadian.

If he could not even talk in Chinese with his daughter, Li wondered, how was he going to pass on traditions? This led to the creation of Mission: Red Pocket.

Li with his daughter in Vancouver. Photo: Kevin Li

The name of the project refers to the traditional red lai see envelopes that Chinese people give out during the Lunar New Year, at weddings and on birthdays.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x