美国华人爱扑克不爱南瓜派

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　　《纽约时报》记者Cara Buckley以“爱扑克不爱南瓜派之传统”标题描写在美华人趁感恩节放假去赌场庆祝的现象。头条照片显示一群年青华人在康州Mohegan Sun欢聚的情景，并以标题“美国华人挤满”此赌场描述。
　　文章以美国人感恩节聚餐大吃火鸡等传统对比华人对此的淡漠。点名41岁的“中国的女儿，法拉盛（纽约市）居民Jennifer Bi”，感恩节（2009年11月26日）凌晨3点在Mohegan Sun赌场百家乐桌边度过。陪同她有她16岁的女儿以及12个朋友。桌边排满三人深的队伍，等候买进100美元参加赌桌的机会
    文章申称她的几千名“中国根”同胞年年如此在感恩节“朝圣”。21岁的土木工程系大学生Chan Juan Zhou说，“感恩节对我们意义不大；是个假日。”她坐的大巴半夜12点到达赌场，从纽约市中国城出发，挤满了人。
   分析这去赌场的传统是因为感恩节是中国餐馆一年极少的半营业或停业的日子。一般的日子，中国城到Mohegan Sun赌场有50趟专车；感恩节有100趟之多。提到赌场近年来开放多种项目，吸引的也不再仅是餐馆职工。
   今年，Mohegan Sun请到了台湾歌手罗志祥，下午2点和半夜2点两次演出，几千时尚华人青年（“女的摩德剪、小短裙、特高跟，男的不对称型刺发、脖系围巾”）前去观赏表演。Zhou女士就是奔着看罗志祥来的。
   Mohegan Sun亚裔部公关及广告经理Ayesha Ma估计有6000华人周三晚上到来；以文章的言语形容，他们“涌进赌场，精力十足，预待激QING不眠夜”。赌场1200个客房，大部分被华人定下，有8字、2字的房号尤其抢手，4字的被避之。罗志祥第二场演唱会散会后，依然有许多华人，不少携带着小孩，在场内的走廊、店铺游逛。赌场的Sunrise Square“日出广场”，即牌九、百家乐等中式赌戏的小区，还依然充满了广东话和普通话的声音，伴随的是烟味，和一些吃面的年青小伙。


        A Tradition That Cherishes Poker, Not Pumpkin Pie


By CARA BUCKLEY （NYT, November 27, 2009）
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.