1 The City Without a Soul

Macau

Casinos are a cancer sucking out the soul of a city. Look at Vegas, Macau, Monaco, Genting or any other place whose sole raison d’être is gambling. They may well dazzle and wow with their amazing architecture. They may well be alluring destinations for high rollers and those for whom the hope for instant wealth is overpowering, but they act as destroyers of lives and magnets for money.

They are like Cathedrals but with different payouts. Travel to Singapore in ten years and it will be interesting to see if the island state’s new casinos (sorry, integrated resorts) have had much of an impact on the society.

Singapore has a lot more going for it than simply casinos, but soon after the two new casinos opened, the crisis counselors were over taxed dealing with problem gamblers and the merchants in Chinatown blamed the Integrated Resorts for the down turn in trade. I suggested to one that he should blame his exorbitant prices but he looked at me and was surprised.

‘But tourists have lots of money!’ he said.

‘I rest my case!’ I replied, but we did not see eye to eye on that one. I mean, as I left I looked at a bronze horse which had a price tag on S$280.

‘Do you like it?’ he asked.

‘I do indeed!’ I said.

‘Sixty dollars,’ he said.

I frowned.

‘Don’t worry, I still make twenty percent’.

I bought it! But I did not pursue the suggestion that he was over charging and that maybe that might be why Chinatown was losing out. In fact I wonder whether some day people will realize that Singapore may well have magnificent shopping, but, if you come from Australia, what you see in Singapore is often cheaper back home, especially if it is electronics or cameras or computers or perfume or...OK, I will stop there.  

But let’s get back to Macau. Normally, a city will grow on you even if first impressions are negative. On first sight, Karachi, Kolkata and Jakarta had little going for them and then I got to know them and things changed. The one city that I have visited several times and shall never miss if I never see it again is that monument to glitz and human weakness: Macau.

My first visit was in 1975 when I went there to investigate its potential as an importing source for a small business I was running in Bougainville. It wasn’t! Mine was too small an operation. It was not interested. End of story. So I went to Hong Kong where they feted me and grabbed my business with all three hands.

Years later, in 2007, when I set out to discover the real Macau, courtesy of Air Asia’s cheap bus runs from Kuala Lumpur, I was in for a shock on several counts. I had arranged for a friend in Macau to meet me at the ferry and duly arrived early in the morning to be greeted by the same surly immigration officials I had seen on my previous journeys. They gave my passport a few desultory flicks and a stamp then sneered when I said thank you.

 The same thing happened at customs and then at the enquiries counter. Nice people, these. The only ones taking an interest in me were the taxi drivers who hounded me from the moment I left the enquiries counter.  

‘See the sights in two hours!’ they roared.

 I imperiously dismissed their screeching and sat down and had a coffee while I waited… and waited.  

I was puzzled. My friend, Lee, had promised me a couple of days of sightseeing. Lee never showed up. I sent an SMS. No response. Had the triads got him already?

I decided to forget about him and take one of the two-hour tours. We saw all that there is to see: casinos, the brick wall of the Cathedral, casinos, a street with allegedly Portuguese houses in it, more casinos, a new shopping center and, for a change, more casinos.

After one hour and twenty five minutes the driver stopped. ‘Tour is over,’ he said. ‘Which Casino do you want me to drop you at?’

‘I don’t gamble’.

‘No, which casino did you want to go to!’

I was really glad he spoke English.

‘Drop me at the Iglesia Spiritus Sanctus,’ I said and he looked at me blankly.

I pointed it out on my map and he nodded and dropped me back near the Cathedral wall. I found a small park, sat down and wondered what to do for the next few days. I watched as bored and listless locals trudged past, few raising a smile or a greeting of any kind. This was definitely not smile city. I looked at the tourists climbing the steps to the nearby wall and wondered at the crazy things we do such as traveling the world to look at a derelict wall.

My phone rang. It was Lee.

‘Sorry! I slept in!’

‘But its noon!’

‘I had to work an extra shift last night and was so tired, time got away from me’.

‘So?’

‘Where are you?’

‘In the small park in front of the Cathedral of the Nativity of Our Lady’.

‘Where is that?’

A pause. If he didn’t know, how did the tourists find out about it?

‘Do you want to meet me at the entrance to the Venetian?’

I heard his tone lift. ‘Sure! See you there in half an hour’.

I walked the few blocks to the new casino which was rather amazing inside with its false sky and stars and canals and gondolas and gambling of course.

I waited.

I waited some more.

I had some more coffee,

Lee never showed up.

I sent an SMS.

Then another.

Nothing.

Obviously he had changed his mind. I hoped he was OK. Or maybe he was sitting at a felt covered table somewhere right now throwing chips at honest dealers? Good luck to him.

I stayed one day in the place and decided to go back to Hong Kong. After all, Hong Kong was less than an hour by ferry. And Hong Kong? Well, Hong Kong is Hong Kong.

It is one of the world’s most amazing cities. Along with Kyoto, it is my favourite city, but for entirely different reasons.

I arrived back in Kuala Lumpur still wondering what Macau really was. I mentioned to a friend who came from Macau how odd I found the place and how strange were its people.  She looked at me as if I knew nothing, which was probably correct.

‘You need to be shown it by a local!’ she said and I agreed. I would give it another try.

A few weeks later Lee sent me an emailed abject apology. He had indeed been in the casino, but he had been called back to work on short notice. I arranged to meet him the following month en route to Hong Kong and suggested I schedule two or three days to see the real Macau.

This time he promised to turn up.

This time he did.

He was one very unhappy man. His story seemed to me to be the story of Macau. It is worth telling. Behind the glitz and the glamour is the soft and nauseous underbelly of greed and human weakness.

Three months before his graduation he had quit college and abandoned plans to become a social worker in favor of dealing cards at a newly opened casino. A few short months later he had been promoted to manager, monitoring operations at gambling tables in the casino.

‘My parents have been unemployed for years and I have a younger brother to look after. I would like to work as a social worker, but it does not pay me enough,’ he said. ‘I have too many to look after. They need me’.

‘Why did you stand me up last year when I came through?’ I asked him.

‘I could do nothing else!’ he said. ‘The casino called me in and I had no choice but to run. I am sorry. I was too embarrassed to call you again and I thought maybe you would not want to see me’.

I smiled at him: ‘Wrong!’ 

We talked about his life in Macau and about the casino culture. His view was that as Macau continues to add casinos, many students forgo their education for the quick cash provided by casino jobs.

‘Surely this whole focus on ‘money’ must flow through to the society?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘It has negative effects on the character of locals, particularly those of us working at casinos,’ admitted Lee. ‘Many of us end up with a skewed vision of what money means. I see millions changing hands quickly,’ he said a little dolefully. ‘Some gamblers wager tens of thousands of dollars at a time. It seems that to many, many really rich people and maybe some who wish they were rich, money in such an environment takes on quite a different value, if you can call it that’.

‘And can you afford to gamble thousands?’ I asked, knowing what the answer would be.

 ‘Compared with the gamblers' stakes, employees like me feel our salaries are far too small,’ he said.

‘So you want more?’ I asked.

 ‘I worry that all that drives me is a pressing desire to earn more and faster money,’ he admitted. ‘Everything here is driven by money. It is an obsession’.

‘Have you considered gambling yourself?’

He shook his head

‘I sometimes dream that I would like to be like the high rollers,’ he said.

He paused and sighed, not looking at me. ‘I also see too many lose everything they have. I know we Chinese are notorious gamblers but include me out!’

‘Is your work interesting?’ I asked.

‘It is as boring as hell,’ he replied. ‘Our training deals merely with techniques for table operations, not for dealing with people. We are trained to care for the money, not the people’.

‘Can’t you continue your studies?’ I asked.

‘As you know only too well, I have to work shift work!’ he replied. ‘There is no chance for study. As you also know, we can be called in at an instant. Our social life is in tatters. We dare not put a step wrong. There are so many others who would grab our jobs if we did that!’

‘So you are stuck with it?’ I asked.

He nodded dolefully. ‘Casino workers’ salaries are higher than most others in Macau,’ he said. ‘As a dealer, I used to get about $2000 a month. As a Manager I get a few hundred more. My salary is higher than a junior civil servant who must have a university education. Why should I finish my study, even if I wanted to?’

I could see his quandary and it saddened me to see a man who was locked into a future he did not want but from which he had no real choice to leave.

‘I read that the church leaders in Macau have made noises about Macau’s lack of morality,’ I said and showed him a report in a Hong Kong paper. ‘They bemoan the social evils that blight Macau’.

‘Damn the church leaders,’ he snorted. ‘What can they do?’

‘I thought Macau was Catholic? I asked.

‘When it is necessary, maybe, but who cares. Do you really think anyone does?’

I nodded in agreement, saying nothing.

‘They talk about morality? How can you strengthen morality? Through religious studies and life education? Through teaching that the pursuit of wealth is not a proper basis for a value system? Who are they going to teach? Who will listen?’

He said nothing for a while.

‘You know,’ he finally said, ‘let them go right ahead and try it. Then make sure that they tell their students what the salary is at the end of the training’.

 ‘Singapore is trying to address this issue,’ I said. ‘Do you think that they will succeed?

‘Has Macau?’ he asked. ‘Forget it! You ask for casinos. You get them. You get the soullessness that goes with that choice’. 

Lee was obviously depressed. I let him settle as he looked wistfully out his window at the rooftops of the small houses in the poor area in which he lived. 

‘I am working in a casino owned by US investors but it is meaningless to me, except for the income,’ he said. ‘Even as a manager, I have very little chance to talk to my colleagues or build friendships with them. The top management is filled with foreigners. I will never get any further ahead. I suppose that I should have kept going with my studies. I could have worked with people and helped them’.

He said nothing more and simply stared into his drink. I waited.

‘We need help,’ he said and lit a fifth cigarette.

Indeed he could continue his studies. Maybe he might even have made a small contribution to humanizing Macau, but I got the distinct impression that would be a little like pissing in the wind.