“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, to the NY Times. While many families in America celebrate the holiday with turkey, pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes, Chan Juan began her Thanksgiving weekend with her friends on Wednesday night in Chinatown, jammed on a bus headed to Mohegan Sun Casino.
It isn’t the most traditional way of celebrating the holiday, but it seems heading to casinos for Thanksgiving is nonetheless becoming a tradition of its own, at least for Chinese people. Starting decades ago, the Thanksgiving casino pilgrimage gained popularity among Chinese immigrants because it was one of the only days that Chinese restaurants are closed, or at least run by a skeleton staff.
For casinos, this means big business. “On any other day, 50 buses might run between Mohegan Sun and New York’s Chinatown, Flushing and Brooklyn; on Thanksgiving, there are 100,” writes the NY Times. Mohegan Sun even lines up a Chinese pop star to perform every year—this year, they got Taiwanese singer Show Luo to perform. Smart marketing, since Chinese people filled the casino’s 1,200 hotel rooms by Wednesday, ready to bet big bucks on Chinese games like Pai Gow tiles and Pai Gow poker.
I suppose there’s nothing like being thankful for a big money weekend.
Read the NY Times front page article here.
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From my experience, my family friends, neighbors and friends of friends use any holiday weekend as an excuse to go to Atlantic City.
I’m finally old enough to step inside a casino but now I don’t have any money to gamble with. ;_;