Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [81]
We finally found a roulette table, and as Jack laid his bets he explained the game to me.
“I didn’t understand any of that,” I said. “All I see is that you’ve just lost about $100 in a fraction of a minute.”
“Yeah, well…but when you win, you win big.”
Jack played a few more rounds, and just as the carnage was getting interesting, we decided that now might be a good time to head to the lounge, drink an overpriced Coke, and observe the action on the floor. I had, of course, witnessed hundreds of people in a casino before, mindlessly dropping coins into slot machines. They don’t play for money in America. It’s true. The big payout is incidental to most gamblers. It’s the numbness they’re after. Not so in China. No one had that look of glazed stupor often found in American casinos. The Chinese were nothing if not engaged over the baccarat tables. They yelled. They smoked. They bet. But no one seemed to be having any fun. And this is why I suspected that a Macau reborn as the Las Vegas of Asia wouldn’t quite work. The expensive nightclubs would fail. The Piaget watches would remain unsold. Because gambling isn’t fun in China. It’s business, and no one takes business more seriously than the Chinese.
“You know,” Jack noted, “this place kind of creeps me out.”
“Agreed. Let’s get out of here.”
We moved on to the Sands, one of the first new casinos to open after the monopoly was busted. It had more of a Reno feel; the flash was ersatz.
“I’m getting a better vibe here,” I said. “I think I’m more of a Reno kind of guy.”
“Not sure I’d admit to that if I were you.”
I found a blackjack table with a low minimum bet, while Jack wandered off in search of another roulette table. Soon, I was in the zone, that thoughtless place, reacting to numbers, calculating odds, playing systematically, and resisting those moments when I get a really good feeling that now would be an excellent time to throw it all in. A couple of hours later, Jack appeared.
“How’d you do?” he asked.
“I’m up…let’s see, about 4,000 Hong Kong dollars. You?”
“I won a couple of hundred bucks.”
“Let’s do something really insane and quit while we’re both ahead,” I suggested. “The likelihood of both of us being ahead has got to be so infinitesimally small that we best run.”
With an hour to kill before the ferry returned us to Hong Kong, we settled in a lounge to watch a cabaret show with dancers in sparkles and spandex and cowboy hats.
“See?” Jack said, watching the dancers. “Everyone still wants to be just like us. Even the Chinese.”
It was time to take Jack to see the real China.
13
It was a swift transition. One moment we were in Kowloon discussing real estate with a taxi driver. “Those buildings there. Eighteen thousand dollars for one square foot. Too much money. In Hong Kong, no money, no honey.” So true. And then, after a perfunctory stroll through Immigration in the sleek and modern Kowloon train station, we boarded a train that whisked us through Hong Kong’s Northern Territories, a hilly and wooded expanse speckled with sudden bursts of high-rises, and suddenly we found ourselves in the bustling border city of Shenzhen.
A quarter century ago, Shenzhen had been little more than an anonymous fishing village. In the 1980s, however, Shenzhen became the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, China’s first foray into the exciting world of capitalism. Comrades turned into entrepreneurs, communes became factories, and tirades against the imperialists of the West gave way to trade with the world. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping, during his tour of southern China, is said to have proclaimed, “To get rich is glorious.” It’s quite likely Deng Xiaoping’s most famous quip, and one can understand why. It’s not, typically, the sort of thing often heard spoken by Communists. There’s a disconnect between Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains! and To get rich is glorious. And yet no one actually heard him say it. No one. There is no record anywhere of Deng Xiaoping expressing these words. Nevertheless, Deng Xiaoping never countered