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JustPlainBill's avatar

I can personally testify that many Chinese are inveterate gamblers. In our younger years, I would occasionally come home from work around midnight to find my Taiwanese wife hosting various acquaintances, playing mahjong. They would play long into the night. Though she only played occasionally, in games that were always for smaller stakes (perhaps fortunately, it was all we could afford back then), some of these people were fanatics and would play every day if they could scratch up a game. She told me about some of them playing for big stakes, where it was not uncommon to win or lose several thousand dollars in a single session. The games she would play in were for relative chump change, so obviously the lure for her fellow players was the action as much as the actual amount of money at stake.

I visited the occasional casino in my Navy days, but by the time I got married I had pretty much lost the taste for it. The last time I went to a casino for the purpose of playing was in the 1990s. Some are much friendlier than others. The Foxwoods Casino in rural Connecticut was one of the nicest, friendliest and most generous with comps. In addition to locals driving out there, I'd see the buses rolling in from NYC--they'd ferry them across from Long Island and bus them up. Lots of Chinese, too, I think they even had Pai Gow set up for them. They finally went belly up due to a new competitor opening up right next to the main highway. Can't ask a rabid gambler to drive 15 minutes through the countryside to get his fix!

Atlantic City was on the other end of the spectrum--cold and rude, put me off on my very first visit. It was almost like they were telling you to just leave a check at the cashier's case and save yourself the trouble of playing. Considering that you were supposed to be having fun in exchange for your inevitable loss, you wouldn't think this would be a very successful business model, but they seemed to be doing well enough.

Las Vegas used to be a cool place in the 70s when I first went there. But around 2015, a recurring industry conference I attended scheduled one of their meetings at a Las Vegas casino. It was the first time I'd been back to Vegas since the late 80s, and it had totally changed. Instead of the western ambiance it used to have, it was now a sterile high rise city that put me off completely. The casino itself felt like Atlantic City--all about money, and no concern about whether or not the customers were enjoying themselves. The room was set up to do everything possible to drive you out of the room and down to the casino--they didn't even give you bottled water.

I'm old enough to remember when anything other than nickel poker with a few locals was considered sketchy if not immoral, and gambling was illegal, supposedly on moral grounds. Then came the state lottery, and that argument went out the window. Now here we are, with Indian reservations and the occasional little burg "creating jobs" with their casinos. Another signal of Western decline, i guess.

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A Reader From Hong Kong's avatar

The following book translated into French from the original Chinese 旧上海的烟赌娼 (Jiu shanghai de yan du chang) should be considered the definitive account of the place that opium , gambling and prostitution occupied in the national psyche of the Chinese people, albeit in bygone Shanghai.

But this passion and urge for gambling is still very much alive in today's Chinese psyche. I would think that this is the way the average Chinese person attempts to escape from the emptiness and despair of his life.

Many peoples have managed to find some form of spiritual solace, but the Chinese have only produced a form of materialistic and transactional superstition which translates naturally into gambling.

Shanghai : opium, jeu, prostitution

Author: Perront, Nadine

P. Picquier, c1992

Other Title:

Jiu shanghai de yan du chang

旧上海的烟赌娼

https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BB16822360?l=en

https://www.babelio.com/livres/Perront-Shangai--opium-jeu-prostitution/149954

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