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, The Associated Press reports.
“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 that take them from Chinatown to casinos outside the city — buses like the one that crashed on a return trip from a Connecticut casino, killing 15 passengers last weekend.
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 that will reliably hand over money.
Mohegan Sun, the Uncasville casino from where the doomed bus was returning, caters especially to Chinese-American gamblers; its website has a Chinese-language section offering gaming and bus promotions. The casino estimates that a fifth of its business comes from ethnic Asian clients.
“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.”
