US casinos see Chinese as major part of business
Source: Agencies |
March 17, 2011, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AT age 75, Mon Ling Ng is hard of hearing and often lonely - a resident of Manhattan's Chinatown who finds a way to fill his days: by gambling.
"I go almost every day; it's exciting, and I have company," said Ng, who takes a bus to a casino hours away.
About 30,000 Chinese New Yorkers per week board discount buses to casinos outside the city - buses like the one that crashed on a return trip from a Connecticut casino, killing 15 passengers.
The crash is illuminating how casinos around New York in many ways treat the city's Chinese-Americans as their bread and butter, a population with an ancient gambling tradition.
"If you run a casino, Chinese business is a major part of the business," said Peter Yee, assistant executive director for behavioral health services at the Hamilton Madison House, which offers Chinese-language treatment for compulsive gambling. "There's no other population that is exclusively targeted by the gambling industry like the Chinese."
Yee noted that Chinese children grow up seeing some form of gambling "as part of everyday ritual."
"We incorporate it in all major celebrations, and it's for money - playing cards, dice, pai gow," he said.
Mohegan Sun, the casino in Uncasville, Connecticut, from where the doomed bus was returning last weekend, caters to Chinese-American gamblers; its website has a Chinese-language section offering gaming and bus promotions. The casino estimates a fifth of its business comes from ethnic Asian clients.
The typical gambling package includes a round-trip bus ticket, plus cash bonuses subsidized by casinos. Some also offer meal coupons.
On any given weekday in New York, about 4,000 seats are sold on dozens of such buses, and 6,000 on weekends, Yee said. More than 90 percent of the passengers come from Chinese communities, drivers said.
Each passenger on the ill-fated bus paid US$15 for the 320-kilometer round trip to Mohegan Sun, said Matthew Yu, operator of Sunflower Express, the ticket agency that coordinated sales.
The World Wide Travel bus left Manhattan for Mohegan last Friday evening and started the return trip just before 4am on Saturday. The journey ended when the bus flipped on its side a few kilometers short of home and slid into a sign pole, shearing it in two and leaving a mess of bodies and twisted metal on Interstate 95.
Many Chinese-American gamblers are elderly, looking for company and entertainment. Others are immigrants with few friends or family in the United States.
As a result, Yee said, when gambling becomes a problem, people don't seek treatment "until they are totally lost - until they lose their homes, their jobs, their families." Others, he said, commit suicide.
"I go almost every day; it's exciting, and I have company," said Ng, who takes a bus to a casino hours away.
About 30,000 Chinese New Yorkers per week board discount buses to casinos outside the city - buses like the one that crashed on a return trip from a Connecticut casino, killing 15 passengers.
The crash is illuminating how casinos around New York in many ways treat the city's Chinese-Americans as their bread and butter, a population with an ancient gambling tradition.
"If you run a casino, Chinese business is a major part of the business," said Peter Yee, assistant executive director for behavioral health services at the Hamilton Madison House, which offers Chinese-language treatment for compulsive gambling. "There's no other population that is exclusively targeted by the gambling industry like the Chinese."
Yee noted that Chinese children grow up seeing some form of gambling "as part of everyday ritual."
"We incorporate it in all major celebrations, and it's for money - playing cards, dice, pai gow," he said.
Mohegan Sun, the casino in Uncasville, Connecticut, from where the doomed bus was returning last weekend, caters to Chinese-American gamblers; its website has a Chinese-language section offering gaming and bus promotions. The casino estimates a fifth of its business comes from ethnic Asian clients.
The typical gambling package includes a round-trip bus ticket, plus cash bonuses subsidized by casinos. Some also offer meal coupons.
On any given weekday in New York, about 4,000 seats are sold on dozens of such buses, and 6,000 on weekends, Yee said. More than 90 percent of the passengers come from Chinese communities, drivers said.
Each passenger on the ill-fated bus paid US$15 for the 320-kilometer round trip to Mohegan Sun, said Matthew Yu, operator of Sunflower Express, the ticket agency that coordinated sales.
The World Wide Travel bus left Manhattan for Mohegan last Friday evening and started the return trip just before 4am on Saturday. The journey ended when the bus flipped on its side a few kilometers short of home and slid into a sign pole, shearing it in two and leaving a mess of bodies and twisted metal on Interstate 95.
Many Chinese-American gamblers are elderly, looking for company and entertainment. Others are immigrants with few friends or family in the United States.
As a result, Yee said, when gambling becomes a problem, people don't seek treatment "until they are totally lost - until they lose their homes, their jobs, their families." Others, he said, commit suicide.
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