China's Twist On Holiday Bonuses: Cash Bricks And Live Goats [PHOTOS]

It's bonus season in China, and a big year-end pay off in a small Chinese village has gone viral online after local officials dramatically and publicly displayed stacks of cash before distributing the money. Several hundred families in a rural village in southwest Sichuan province were awaiting their cut of a cooperative investment, which reportedly earned the village 12 million yuan ($1.9 million).

According to the South China Morning Post, guards were posted outside the “money wall” because the entire process of distributing the “bricks” of cash took two days to complete. “It took me so long to count the money that I almost lost strength and feeling in my hands,” local newspaper Huaxi Metropolis Daily quoted one villager who received 300,000 yuan.

A total of 340 of the village’s total 483 households are shareholders of the farming cooperative, which was established last year. The profits come from pig farming, cherry orchards and small-scale hydropower generation.

Bonuses are commonly distributed ahead of the Lunar New Year/Spring Festival holiday season, but not all holiday bonuses come in cash form. Employees of a real estate company in Shiyan, Hubei province, were recently gifted live goats that were specially imported from Inner Mongolia to their doorsteps. “Our company gave a live sheep to every employee,” one property consultant named Wang said. “It tasted pretty good,” she added.