The Casino The Casino [1] I have always wanted to write a story about the experience of a Chinese living in Britain. It’s such a big subject and I believe many people will be interested in reading such a story. At least it represents a different voice. I have actually started to write, but I was always forced to stop when I finished the first paragraph because I wouldn’t know what to write next. Not enough words came out of my head. Not enough to make a story anyway. So I phone up my friend Dennis to whom I dedicate this short story. He lives in Fishguard, and leads a boring life. So he says. I tell him my plan to write something about the personal experience of a Sino-British person and ask him if he has any idea. He points out the obvious that there is nothing worth writing since Chinese people who live in Britain have a life as uneventful as a typical Victorian middle-class woman had. Chinese people are either in the catering business (a grand name for a takeaway and a restaurant) or in a casino. There is nothing to talk about their lives. Dennis suggests in some kind of a joke that I could write about him. I say, great idea. But then I face the problem of not knowing much about his life. All I know about him is he goes to College Monday to Friday to study Engineering and he works in his brother-in-law’s takeaway as a chef from Friday night to Sunday. He also has a girl-friend down South, somewhere in Bournemouth I guess. These are inadequate to make a story, at least a story worth reading. So I phone him again two days later and ask him what exactly he does in his life. He can’t say much to my question. The conversation moves to his struggle with the English Language. He sometimes still has difficulty with the grammar and the usage of the English Language, and whenever he has a problem he would call to consult me. I’m always willing to help. I’ve known Dennis since 1986. The year before I moved to England, and we both went to this government school in Sha Tau Kok which lies near the border of Hong Kong and China. The school has a reputation. It almost topped the chart of The Worst Schools of Hong Kong. True we weren’t doing much studying and I remember we always sneaked out of the school after the teacher had taken the attendance. So eventually I failed my exams in Hong Kong. So did Dennis. This is one of the major reasons I was sent to England. My parents wanted me to carry on with my study, and under the powerful persuasion of my sister Elizabeth I was immediately transported to a tiny village in the middle of nowhere in Cumbria. Why Cumbria? People would ask. The only reason is I have a sister and a brother-in-law in Cumbria, and they would take care of me. So I went to this independent school in Barrow-in-Furness. The school is a classic late Victorian building, and all the teachers, especially the headmistress, were kind to me. Maybe it was because I was the only Chinese studying there, and maybe it was because my English at that time was bad. I could not speak a word of English when I went there. I was fairly intimidated. It was fairly boring living in Barrow too. My life was like the life of a fish in a tank until I went to University last year studying English Literature. Whenever I go back to Barrow now to see my sister and my brother-in-law and the three lovely nephews, I feel bored after a day or two. I don’t like going to the local pubs. I have nothing in common with the local people. But I’m not supposed to tell my story - well it’s not interesting enough to attract a large readership. As I said I wanted to write a story about the boring life of a Chinese who lives in Britain, so I phone Dennis again. He is not helpful this time. Perhaps he is getting sick of me asking him the same question every time I call. I quickly change the subject. I ask him if he has any new CD imported from Hong Kong. He gives me a list of the popular singers and I ask him to violate the copyright of the record companies and pirate some Chinese songs for me. Before we hang up I tell him I am going to write the story I have always wanted to write no matter how little ideas I have. He only says: Go ahead and stop tormenting me with your story. That is very kind of him, I think. I looked through my impressive collection of short story books and tried to extract some ideas out of them. But none of them is useful. None of them tells anything about a Chinese person leading a life in Britain. I’m desperate. The only story I can write about is the life of Dennis, and I certainly am not going to tell his life. This is positively going to be an uninteresting story, like the one you would read about the life of some unknown insignificant person. This is an uninteresting story because it is written by a person who has nothing to do but to write a story about a young Chinese guy living in Britain. I know it’s going to be a failure, since no one would take any interest in the life of a young man who comes over to Britain from Hong Kong four years ago, and who goes to College during weekdays and works in a Chinese takeaway during weekends. The story begins like this: Honestly, it was an uneventful life. But what does one expect when Danny was stuck in the middle of nowhere in County Dyfed? And it ends like this: Dennis says, “Do send me your boring story. And stop mentioning it ever again in front of me.” That is very kind of Dennis, I think. [2] Honestly, it was an uneventful life. But what does one expect when Danny was stuck in the middle of nowhere in County Dyfed? He had been living in Fishguard for three years, and ever since he came to Britain he rarely went out of that little community. He would either stay at home or work in the Chinese takeaway owned by Dennis’s sister. He went to the local College too. He studied Hotel and Management, a course, he reckoned, would enable him to find a comfortable job in Hong Kong later on. Danny’s full name was Tai Man Chan. Danny was a name he adopted when he came to Britain. It made life easier for him, so he said, because he would not have the trouble of explaining what his real names meant to anyone who was curious to find out what exactly Tai Man stood for in Chinese. So everyone in Fishguard called him Danny except Dennis’s sister and her husband who still called him Tai Man. He was quite well-known in Fishguard too because it seemed that he was one of the only two Chinese bachelors in the area. Tai Man was born in 1971 in Hong Kong. It was Christmas Eve when he made his first cry in the maternity ward of Queen Elizabeth II Hospital. His mother cried too when he came to the world because she had wanted a boy for so long after giving birth to four girls previously. Tai Man was not an intelligent boy. He went to a school near Sheung Shui - one of the many towns in Hong Kong. He always almost came last in the school examinations, the bottom of the class was always Dennis, I was told. When he reached the age of thirteen he went to this secondary school which was funded by the government with Dennis, and they were always allocated in the same class. They became very good friends, although none of them was academically intelligent. So they failed their O Level examinations at the age of sixteen. They then entered the world of business, trying to work in a supermarket as storemen but the salary was not even enough to cover basic necessities, so they said. They decided one day to set up their own business and sell computer chips to small commercial companies. It went bust because no one was interested in what they sold. They then set up another business with their limited amount of money which they saved up by working overtime and part-time. They provided frames for posters, and the little shop sold pictures and prints too. It went fine in the first three months, but it gradually collapsed. Neither of them knew how to manage frames. So at the age of twenty, Dennis made the decision of moving to Britain to seek his fortune by studying during weekdays and working during weekends. He persuaded Danny to go with him. And they lived with Dennis’s sister and her husband and their four year old son. It was a cold Tuesday in February and Dennis wrapped himself up with two jumpers and a thick jacket. He is not used to the excellent snowy weather of Britain yet. Of course he loves snow because he has never seen it before in Hong Kong. The whiteness of the field and of the road overwhelmed him. But he loves snow. He did not have to work because it was half-term and the Chinese takeaway closed on Tuesdays. So he took the opportunity to visit the local library. Ever since he settled down in Wales he grew to like reading. He believes that reading a variety of books would help to improve both his spoken and written English. So he says. When he had a query about a word or a phrase, he would consult Danny whose knowledge of English was slightly better. Or sometimes he would ring to ask me, but very rarely. Dennis loves the smell of the library. It is clean and quiet. So he says. He also likes the smell of books, especially old books. He never spent more than one minute in a library while he lived in Hong Kong, but now he would stay in it looking through all the books without wanting to go. It was this very Tuesday that he came across this thick big book The State of the Language. He flicked through the pages and was impressed by the cover because he was captured by the sentence written in calligraphy at the top right hand corner. He looked in to the contents and he found a name which resembled a Chinese person. Quickly he turned to the appropriate page and started reading. Dennis was particularly drawn to this extract: “He said I speak English very well.” She was proud of that compliment; I thought it was an insult, but it was too much trouble to explain to her why. When white demons said, “You speak English very well,” I muttered, “It’s my language too.” The Japanese kids, who were always ahead of us socially, said the way to answer is, “Thank you. So do you.” He thought and thought, and said to himself that this was a good way to attack people at College who laughed at his English. He borrowed a pen and a piece of paper from the librarian and copied down these sentences. He was determined to learn them, adding: I’m British too. He thinks these phrases would be useful one day. He spent his whole afternoon in the library in solitude. He liked being left alone sometimes. So he said. He could think and reflect his life. That evening he hid himself in the bedroom, not knowing what to so. So he went to Danny’s bedroom and asked him how he was getting on with his course. They spoke in Chinese, but occasionally with a few English words. This was always how they communicated with each other, anyway. Dennis told Danny that he had to do an assignment on the health and safety of the industrial workers in the beginning of the Twentieth Century, and he wondered why. What’s it got to do with Engineering? You tell me. Danny wondered too. I don’t understand some of the passages. I think I will ask Alex to help me. What’s he doing at the moment? He is doing English Literature in University. Second year. The conversation then turned to Chinese. This was typical and it happened whenever they talked to each other. Danny asked why Literature. Why not something like Computing or Business Studies because with those kind of subjects it would be easier to obtain a job in Hong Kong and make a lot of money. Danny also asked if I was going to teach, and added How much can a teacher earn? Dennis doesn’t know much about me anyway, so he could not answer the questions posed by Danny. Actually Dennis has asked me once what I am going to do with a degree in English Literature. He has the same query as most of the members of my family: Does a degree in English Literature make plenty of money in future? Whenever people ask me this question, whether a friend or a member of my family, I would answer with a question: Would going to the casino every night enable you to become rich? But I’m not supposed to be telling a tale about myself because it’s as boring as the subject I study. At least my brothers and sisters, especially my mother, think Literature is boring. [3] George Orwell is right. Chinese people are addicted to gambling. George Orwell does generalise. But most of the Chinese people I know in Britain like gambling more than their own children. To make life exciting out of a boring life, I suppose, the only alternative for Chinese people in Britain is to gamble. They either place their bets on animals like horses and dogs or on card games like black-jack and banker. During the afternoon when they don’t have to work these Chinese people would run down to the local book-maker, and once they finish work at night they would change their clothes as quickly as possible and drive to the nearest casino. My brother-in-law used to be one of these typical British-Chinese, but now he finds something more intriguing to play with his limited amount of money. He buys and sells shares. But my brother-in-law’s life is just as boring as mine, so it’s not really worthwhile talking about. Tai Man was introduced to a casino in Britain when he was twenty one. Ever since then, he fell in love with the smoky atmosphere of this casino in Swansea. That particular casino was the nearest betting establishment he could go. He said that he felt more like home in the casino than he did in the College and in the takeaway, because he could see more Chinese there than he could in the rest of Wales. Besides he could talk to most of the people there since their common language was either Cantonese or Hakka. He had tried many times to persuade Dennis to go with him but Dennis was not interested at all. So one Saturday night after work he drove to Swansea by himself. When he entered the casino, he was immediately greeted by a middle aged, bald and repulsive looking Chinese. Hi! You OK? He cried in English. OK. And in Chinese Danny said: Fine. Fine. You? Same as usual. I have not seen you for a while. What the fuck have you been doing? Asked in Cantonese by the repulsive looking Chinese. Busy studying. A lot of homework. Busy in the takeaway. I had no time to gamble. What about you? Have you won? I won fucking nothing. The fucking banker wins all the time. I have fucking lost five hundred pounds. He could not utter a sentence without an adjective. Let’s throw dice and be rich. They went to the Dice Table and a white man was throwing the dice. Simultaneously people surrounding the table were shouting either “Two” or “Twelve” in Cantonese as if they were bargaining in a market. Danny joined in at one corner, placed his bets and waited for the next throw. The white man threw the dice again. One landed with a three and the other one with a four. It was seven. Everybody lost their bet. Danny, as usual, blamed it on the hands of the white man. He muttered in Hakka to the person next to him, They do not know how to throw dice. The dice fell into the hand of the ugly looking Chinese who swore most of the time. It was his turn. All the bets were placed. He held the dice firmly in his coarse hand, treating them like they were diamonds. Slowly he moved his left hand towards his mouth and blew some air into the tightly closed hand. Very swiftly he threw the dice out which knocked rhythmically around the high edges of the Dice Table. One dice showed one and the other showed two. A lot of voices were heard at the same time. English, Cantonese and Hakka blended and clashed in the air like nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide mix with each other in the atmosphere. Danny won thirteen pounds. He seized the opportunity and screamed in English to the dealer: Eight Centre. No. Make it Twelve Centre. The horrible looking middle aged Chinese did what he did the first time with the dice. What a gesture. The dice were thrown after such an dramatic act. It was two. Danny won nearly a hundred pounds. He could not believe his luck, and screamed across to the bald man in Cantonese: You really have the hands of god like Maradona. Danny increased his bets. He won more, and for half an hour since he was there he won nearly three hundred pounds. He then turned to the Black-jack Table. Luck seemed to drift away from him suddenly. He gradually lost what he had won. And after losing a couple of games, he doubled and tripled his bet. He put sixty pounds on the betting box and was given a King and a Queen. The dealer had a Five on the table. It was a pretty bad start, like my story; and Danny thought that this time with his twenty points he could win some money back. The dealer inquired every gambler if they wanted any card, but no one said yes. Not even the Chinese woman who had a Jack and a three wanted to risk the precious chance of waiting for the dealer to bust. So it was the dealer’s turn to draw his cards. Simultaneously the Chinese people were screaming in English. Picture. Picture. As predicted the dealer obtained a Jack. So he had to draw another card. When he moved his hand to the card box, the Chinese people, almost like a witch-hunt, yelled again in English. Picture! Picture! It was an Ace. Another card was required. The cry of “Picture! Picture!” was louder and louder. It was as though they were protesting outside Parliament. The dealer drew the card and when it was exposed to naked eyes, the shocking faces were like they had just experienced an earthquake. No one could believe what they saw and the dealer began to collect the bets. Everybody on the Black-jack Table shouted in Cantonese “Yau Mo Kau Chaw.” which I think literally means “Is there anything wrong?” The longer Danny stayed in the casino, the more he lost what he had won earlier on. In fact he was losing the three hundred pounds he brought with him. He decided to move to the Roulette Table with the remaining two hundred pounds. He exchanged half of his money into blue chips. Blue has always been his lucky colour. So he said. He scattered the chips on the providing thirty seven numbered squares with a heavier portion on the lower end. At the same time the little silver ball was travelling speedily around the rim of the roulette like a man-made satellite running around the Earth. Some thirty seconds later it looked as though the satellite gradually hit the Earth surface and the tiny pieces were jumping about on the ground. Finally the silver ball rested itself on the number 24, and someone was screaming like mad. It was not Danny. He only had one chip on that winning square, but a Chinese woman who stood next to him had a dozen of chips on Square Box 24. She was jubilant. Danny was dejected. So with not many blue chips he placed his bet again hoping that this time he could win back the loss. The same process began. The tiny silver ball rolled around the rim of the roulette again. It was like endless, like the Earth going round the Sun. The movement of the ball slowed down gradually and hit the centre of the roulette. It jumped and jumped until eventually it found its home on the number 0. A lot of voices were heard. Tai Man was screaming like mad this time. But it was a cry of self-pity instead of triumph. Damn. He had put all the remaining chips almost everywhere on the betting table, but the box 0 was a little too far for him to reach. He won nothing. He lost two-third of his money. Grumbling in Cantonese: I have nearly lost all my money, he teamed up with the gruesome looking Chinese man again and went to the Dice Table. His friend said to him in Hakka: What? Lost all the fucking money? Always chance to win when there is a gamble. Continue. They occupied two spaces which were directly facing the dealers. An old Chinese of mid-sixty held the dices and was ready to throw. Twelve announced one of the dealers. Danny mumbled in English: Just my luck. Should’ve come ten seconds earlier and shouted four centre. He began to place his bet. So did the horrible looking bald Chinese man. Without performing any ritual like the bald one did, the old man threw his dice. “Seven announced the dealer.” It was Danny’s turn to throw. He believed in himself. So he doubled his bet. His friend told him: Throw good. The dice danced on the table, going round and round, like a female ballet dancer twirling her attractive body. Two twos faced up and Danny said in English: Thank God. He threw again and the dices danced again. Two threes were seen. Danny was pleased. So he quadrupled his bet. His friend saw what he did and said to him, You are ferocious. It is like you are fucking betting all you have. Danny grinned and did not response. He had faith in himself. The dice were thrown out of Danny’s hand. This time they knocked on the table more rhythmically than any other time. One dice stopped and a “Five” was shown. Everyone was waiting for the other dice to stop twirling, and they were shouting too. Five. Five. The movement of the whirling dice was almost echoed by the heartbeats of the participants. Tai Man fixed his eyes on this little spinning dice and his head was spinning too. He felt slightly giddy. Five! Five! The dice was like a little doll dancing to a music box. It twirled and twirled It ceased to move at last. “Two” faced upwards. “Seven” announced the dealer. “Fuck the cunt of your mother.” cried the ugly Chinese man in Cantonese. “Yau Mo Kau Chaw” yelled Danny. Without uttering another word Tai Man headed to the entrance. He only had twenty pounds left. He was in a bad mood. He drove back to Fishguard at half past three in the morning. He was driving constantly at 70 miles per hour. [4] It was Sunday afternoon. The day seemed shorter. By the time Danny woke up, Dennis was already doing the preparation for the night in the kitchen. Outside, it was snowing. Inside Dennis wrapped himself with thick jumpers as usual, and he was peeling the shells of prawns. Danny put the kettle on. He kept yawning. Dennis asked him in Chinese, “Did you win last night?” “No.” “Judging by your face, I know you lost.” Then, “How much did you lose?” “Nearly three hundred pounds.” “Don’t gamble anymore. You have to save some money for your tuition fee.” And then in English Danny shouted, “Shit, I’ve still got an essay to do for tomorrow.” Danny wished he could finish his course as soon as possible. He wanted to go back to Hong Kong and work in a decent environment. He swore to himself that whatever he would do in the future he would never work in the kitchen as a chef. He hated the job. He was mentally exhausted by the work. But then he thought: “What else can I do in Britain?” He knew very well that his knowledge of English was inadequate for obtaining a comfortable job in Britain, but with his English he realised he could hold a higher position if working in Hong Kong. So he said. He could not wait to get away from Fishguard. He was bored. He was unhappy with the uneventful life in Fishguard. So my boring tale is told. As I have mentioned, it’s not worth reading. There is nothing unusual about the story anyway. But I’m happy with what I’ve done. So I telephone Dennis. The phone rings for ages, and just when I want to hang up, a sexy male voice says, “Hello.” I break into Chinese immediately because I recognise the voice. “Hi, how do you do?” “Same as usual. Actually I have just come back from Bournemouth now.” “To see your girl-friend?” “Yes.” “How could you do that? I thought you were supposed to be in College.” “I took some days off.” I switch into English. This is also typical whenever I talk to Dennis because sometimes I can’t express myself as much as I can in Chinese. “You’re skiving school. That’s disgraceful. I thought you came over to study.” I say sarcastically. “I need a bit of love to balance the boring life in Fishguard.” He replies in English. The rest of our conversation is uninteresting so there is no point to write about it. But before I say goodbye, I tell him that I have finished the story I have always wanted to write. Dennis screams in English, “Oh, not your stupid story again. I’ve had enough. Please leave me alone.” I say to Dennis I will send the tale to him. Dennis says, “Do send me your boring story. And stop mentioning it ever again in front of me.” That is very kind of Dennis, I think.
Copyright © 2002 K P William Cheng |