Just like how Americans go cruising in the Caribbean in the winter, the Chinese flock to the southernmost province in the country, Hainan province. Among them, 1,000+ are employees of injection press giant Haitian Group.

Haitian is spending more than 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million) on company-sponsored, all-inclusive vacation packages for its 6,000 workers, according to the Zhejiang Daily.

Employees and their families are able to choose from six popular tourism destinations in the country. The company flew the first group to Hainan Island, the hottest pick, for a 6-day vacation in two chartered planes on January 5.

Haitian's annual output topped 10 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) in 2010, the report said. Despite busy production schedules, executives decided to reward the staff for their hard work in the past year with group vacations around the upcoming Chinese New Year/Spring Festival, which starts Feb 3 this year.

That reminds me of the type of all-inclusive, stress-free family vacations my parents' companies used to organize. I always tagged along and had fun playing with all the other children whose parents worked with my parents.

I used to think it was a benefit exclusive to state-owned enterprises and government employees in the old days. But it's more of a Chinese cultural event. Nowadays, privately owned companies and even foreign-invested firms continue to organize these group retreats, where you and your family go site-seeing with all your coworkers and their families.

The time spent together during those trips made me so familiar with some of the families that many years later, I still remember trivial things such as Amy didn't like to brush teeth in the morning, so to speak.

As attractive as an employer-paid vacation sounds, somehow, it's a little hard for me to picture the family-friendly week-long group tour in the American corporate setting. Would you go if offered?