A Tradition That Cherishes Poker, Not Pumpkin Pie, Thursday November 26, 2009 USA

endlessjoy @ Asianfanatics wrote:
A Tradition That Cherishes Poker, Not Pumpkin Pie

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UNCASVILLE, Conn. — Some traditions are indelibly carved into the nation’s psyche, among them tucking in late each November to inadvisable amounts of mashed potatoes, turkey and pie. Then there are the traditions that spring from an indifference to all that, which is how Jennifer Bi, 41 years old, mother and manicurist, daughter of China and denizen of Flushing, Queens, found herself staring down a baccarat table in a Connecticut casino at 3 a.m. on Thanksgiving.

The air around her was filled by dinging slot machines and the yelps and groans that signified money being won and lost, but Ms. Bi was singularly focused on the baccarat table, surrounded three deep by people waiting to pay the $100 buy-in to play. She had arrived here at the casino, Mohegan Sun, around 1 a.m. with her 16-year-old daughter and 12 friends in tow.

The plan was to stay until about 5 a.m. and then groggily head home, after a little gambling and a lot of gawking at the thousands of others with Chinese roots who had made the same annual pilgrimage.

“Thanksgiving doesn’t mean a lot to us; it’s a vacation,” said Chan Juan Zhou, a 21-year-old college student who lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and studies civil engineering. Ms. Zhou arrived at the casino with 13 friends around midnight on a jammed bus from Chinatown.

Heading to casinos first became a Thanksgiving activity for Chinese immigrants decades ago because the holiday is one of the only days that Chinese restaurants are either run by a skeleton staff or closed. Mohegan Sun is one of several regional casinos that compete for this crowd. On any other day, 50 buses might run between Mohegan Sun and Chinese neighborhoods in New York, along with some from Massachusetts; on Thanksgiving, there are 100.

“Most restaurant workers take the day off, gather with friends and go find entertainment,” said Joe Lam, president of L-3 Advertising and a longtime member of New York’s Chinese Chamber of Commerce. “This is something that Asian immigrants rely on.”

In recent years, casinos have broadened their appeal; restaurant workers now make up only part of their Chinese crowds at Thanksgiving, and gambling is only part of the draw. Each year, Mohegan Sun lines up a pop star with Chinese appeal, and this time, it was Show Luo, a boyish and winsome Taiwanese singer and dancer, who performed two-hour shows at 2 a.m. and 2 p.m. At each performance, stylish Chinese youths filled the arena by the thousands, the girls in mod haircuts, tiny skirts and precarious heels, the boys with spiky asymmetrical hair and neck scarves.

“The Chinese don’t have that much entertainment here in the United States,” said Ms. Zhou, who moved to the United States from China nine years ago, and showed up at the casino not to gamble, but to see Mr. Luo, whom she deemed a “great dancer” and “handsome.”

Ayesha Ma, Mohegan Sun’s Asian advertising and public relations manager, estimated that 6,000 Chinese people flooded into the casino late Wednesday night, wide awake and excited for the sleepless night ahead.

“They come in after work, enjoy the time after work, go back at 5 or 6 in the morning,” Ms. Ma said. “They have that kind of energy.”

Still, most of Mohegan Sun’s 1,200 hotel rooms were filled Wednesday night by Chinese patrons, sending front desk clerks scrambling to meet requests for rooms or floors with lucky numbers. Highest in demand: anything with an 8 — in Chinese it sounds like the word for prosper — or a 2, lucky because it connotes doubling. Last to go, and taken only grudgingly, was anything containing the dreaded No. 4; in Chinese, the number sounds like the word for death.

After the buses delivered people in great waves late Wednesday, visitors, often with tiny children, strolled through the casino’s hallways and shops, softly aglow in artificial light. The casino’s Sunrise Square, which is stocked with mini-baccarat and Chinese games like pai gow tiles and pai gow poker, became packed, filled with the sounds of Cantonese and Mandarin and plumes of smoke, as young men hunched over steaming bowls of noodles nearby, eating quickly in a whir of chopsticks.

As the night wore on, young people surged toward the arena, chattering and flirting, eager to see Mr. Luo’s 2 a.m. show, as the middle-aged patrons settled in for a long night at the tables of Sunrise Square. Off in a corner, lining rows of long soft couches, were Chinese patrons who were older yet, fast asleep, mouths agape, gray heads resting on the plush cushions.

The night slipped by in the suspended, airless way that marks the passage of time in casinos, until the concert was over, and the buses arrived before dawn, fetching, among the thousands of riders, Ms. Zhou and her friends, who were still exhilarated from the show and only a little sleepy.

avondale09 wrote:Pfffft that's ridiculous, I didn't even notice she said that. Apparently, they REALLY have no idea who he is. Wow. Like... wow, lol.

dimpleyy wrote:Woot Woot! He was on the NY Times!

He was also on the world journal
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Xiao Feng wrote:Wait a minute, the woman in the video says "Let's take a look at how the artists around the world compare to the real stars like Zac Efron"? REALLY? Just because he's taiwanese he's not a real star? Come on, Show is to so many people (me included, of course) much more a REAL star than Zac Efron, whom I personally can't stand...

o_ost1nao_o wrote:Anyway, her article wasn't focused on Show, and she obviously didn't even know enough about the concert to get his name right.