Research Of The Success Of Macau Casino
What I Already Knew / What I Wanted to Know
'The more you bet, the more you get” these are the words come out from people who believe they can become millionaires from gambling. Based on what I had seen so far, gambling is a commonly known entertainment, but meanwhile, it is also a money risky investment. However, I might know gamble better than other people because my cultural background is a bit complicated: I was born in mainland China, Fujian province, China, then I moved away and grew up in Guangdong Province, China, eventually my parents wanted to move to Macau (the place I am going to talk about in this research), so I basically was raised in two different places (Guangdong and Macau).
I already knew that casino is an entertainment that people invest money in and hope that they can get more money back. But other than that, I didn’t really know much about what casino was, what gambling was, and what Macau was. When I was young, I always went to some luxurious hotels with my relatives. At first, I was naive enough to believe that my relatives told me that there was a huge shopping mall in the hotel that only adults could enter. My elder sister and I always had to wait for hours outside the shopping centre for them to come out and they even had no clothes on their hands. Everything came clear when the time my sister turned into 21 years old and I was 16 years old. She was finally old enough to get inside the “shopping mall.” She told me that it was quite different from what she had imagined and been told by our relatives. It was a large room used for entertainment equipped with gambling devices and gambling tables. To be more specific, there were different colors of chips and cards on the tables; there were many tables like this in the room that ordinary people were sitting around the table with a formal dressed worker in the center which was quite appealing and new for me. The mystery of gambling is always in my heart, and I always want to know what is inside those luxury hotels? Why is it so popular among adults? What is the secret of this place? I made a list of the things I wanted to know. From that list, I was able to form my research question: how did Macau become such a successful casino capital of the world?
The Story of My Search
My search took me about three weeks to work on, including searching, interviewing, drafting and editing. I began my research by typing the keys words “what are the secrets behind Casino?” in the Google search engine. The answers provided from the website triggered my interests about the topic. In the Escape Magazine by planet 7, the article “Top 15 Secrets That Casinos Don't Want You to Know” it mentions about the 15 secrets that you do not notice casinos are doing. There are some secrets that I did not even think about before: one of them is that the lighting in the casino aims to provide you a comfortable environment just like your living room. Because the casino wants to make sure you are secure and comfortable that you are willing to stay longer and do not think that the casino is going to trick your money. The other interesting one is that the reason why they use chips is that they want the players to carry and spend the money easily when you move around the casino. I also conducted a very interesting interview with Michael Steckhan who is an avid gambler and knows the ins and outs of casino in general. One of the questions I had asked was that “what do you think of gambling?” Michael responded that “Casino is a fun place to earn some pocket money if you are aware of the rules in casino. For me, I could win more money from the machines than gambling on the tables, because machines work in a certain way that it is easy to predict, but gambling on the table needs too much luck that I do not believe I had a lot” said Michael. The information that Mr. Steckhan offered me was great because I could not find those ideas online. From there I cannot determined a place to study more the topic until my instructor Bronwyn Stewart inspired me that I should think about my own cultural connection with casino. So I decided to narrow the place to my hometown, Macau.
During the next week, I used INFOHawk+ to help me with my research, but I ended up finding an online book titled “Traditional Organized Crime in the Modern World: Responses to Socioeconomic Change”, which was not even close to my topic. Thereby, I started to focus on google researching. Starting with the brief introduction of the history of revitalized Macau would be a great idea. According to the article “A Brief History of Macau - Macau” in 1557, the Portuguese occupied Macao, making it the first European colony in East Asia. For more than a century, the port for trade between Asia and the rest of the world: primary sources of trade were ships from Italy, Portugal and Spain, trading Chinese silk and tea, Japanese crafts, Indian spices, African ivory and Brazilian gold. In the 1960s, with the widespread legalization of gambling, Macau became a freewheeling place, plagued by gambling, espionage and crime. Just before it was handed over to Beijing in 1999, the Portuguese government started a large amount of public works projects. They built a huge international airport on a reclaimed island, with a new bridge linking the two islands of Macau. In recent years, two man made lakes have been built along the outer harbor of playa grande and cotai. These projects and continued development have turned Macau into a place full of casinos and luxury resorts.
In the last week, I was focusing on digging some real reasons about why casino could be this successful in Macau besides the history reasons. One of the interesting facts I found out was that Macau owes much of its success to its communist ideology. Chinese people love to gamble, but the government has long banned casinos on the mainland. However, after Portugal's handover in 1999, the Macau government allowed them to continue operating in the territory. Still, Macau's remarkable growth has been driven not by mass tourism, but by its success in attracting 'high rollers'. There were mainland businessmen and communist party members swarmed in because unlike America's tightly regulated casinos, casino companies here don't ask too many questions about who the big spenders are or where they get money from (Vlcek, 2019). Another point I found out was that thanks to Las Vegas, Macao has made a good start. Much of Macau's growth is due to three Las Vegas companies investing in the territory; Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Las Vegas and Encore, and MGM Resorts International have all developed casino Resorts in Macau. Not only are they knockoffs on the high road, but they already exceed the real thing in size, amenities and luxury by many measures. I continued my research about finding the connection between Macau and Las Vegas, based on the article “Macau’s Big Gamble”, the gambling atmosphere and style at Macau is similar to that at Las Vegas on the surface. However, on the inside this gambling center of the world has a very distinct Chinese culture, which ended up being one of the reasons why they are such a successful organization. Despite these exotic features, Macau's casinos are carefully tailored to the Chinese market while incorporating a Chinese concept of superstition and luck. They use a feng shui consultant to determine the layout of the place, but a gaming expert at Peking University, Dr Wang Xuehong thinks there are more reasons. “Everyone loves adventure, it's like getting married,' she explained. To compare, in western countries, people view gambling as a relaxed activity; However, Chinese casino customers see it as a financial adventure. The research results in the article “Macau – Gaming Capital of the World” demonstrates that Chinese gamers have a strong illusion of control, they believe that people are superstitious and that they have all the good luck to win more money.
The Search Results and Conclusion
According to all the information I gathered, I concluded that the success of Macau is inevitable. The country is doing really well for itself with the recent changes to allow casinos to do business there. Not to mention about the history of Macau that Portuguese gave it the opportunity to become a popular trading port with other nations, also the legalization, the cultures and politics are the keys to the renaissance; Macau has Lag Vegas as a really good model to start with, and the perspectives of the communist ideology and the superstition made the success of casino in Macau happened.
Even though it was a long process researching, I still think it was a really amazing and enjoyable research experience. Not only had I learned something more about my hometown, and casino, and all the facts that I would never known if I did not do this research, but also it helped to develop my skills in many ways. From this experience, I have learned how to manage my time and energy more effectively and reasonably. I would edit and check the essay multiple times instead of one time. I would seek for assistance from either my instructor or the writing center earlier next time. My writing skill has certainly been improved by gathering and paraphrasing all the important information I needed and writing well-developed paragraphs. I also found out that using an outline to organize my thoughts before I begin writing was extremely helpful when it comes to time-consuming study papers. In the end, the idea I wanted to express to my readers is please be bold and enjoy the process when you try to find out the stuff you are curious about, even if the process might be complicated and challenging, the consequences are always going to benefit either your personal vision about the world or your personal techniques that you need to survive in society.
Bibliography
- “A Brief History of Macau - Macau.” Macau - A Brief History of Macau | Fodor's Travel, www.fodors.com/world/asia/china/macau/experiences/a-brief-history-of-macau-265629550.
- Branigan, Tania. “Macau – Gaming Capital of the World.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 11 May 2011, www.theguardian.com/travel/2011/may/11/macau-gambling-capital-of-world.
- Fallows, James. “Macau's Big Gamble.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 17 Sept. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/09/macau-s-big-gamble/306131/.
- Michael Steckhan, Personal Interview, April 13 2019
- Osnos, Evan. “The God of Gamblers.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 19 June 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/09/the-god-of-gamblers.
- “Top 15 Secrets That Casinos Don't Want You to Know | Planet 7 Magazine.” Escape Magazine by Planet 7, 12 Mar. 2019, www.planet7casino.com/fun-time/top-15-secrets-casinos-dont-want-know/.
- Velotta, Richard N. “How Macau Became a Powerhouse (with a Little Help from Las Vegas).”
- VegasInc.com, 3 Oct. 2011, https://vegasinc.lasvegassun.com/business/gaming/2011/oct/03/how-macau-became-powerhouse-little-help-las-vegas/
- Vlcek, William. “How Macau Became the World's Casino Capital.” The Conversation, 29 Jan. 2019, https://theconversation.com/how-macau-became-the-worlds-casino-capital-108866
