CN - Macau) Gambling on Tigers

[Guest guest]

South China Morning Post

http://www.scmp.com/

Wednesday October 19 2005

 

Gambling on tigers

 

by Freda Wan, Macau

 

A white tiger cub clung to his deflated toy basketball as he dozed

off at the Macau Tower on a Sunday afternoon. His twin sister snoozed

with her right paw covering her eyes. Impatient tourists were

disappointed that they had paid 70 patacas to see drowsy tigers. One

Cantonese-speaking man encouraged his son to bang on the glass

window. 'Wake it up,' he said. 'I hate it when animals are lazy.'

 

Such is the living environment of Macau's latest novelty - two white

tiger cubs. This publicity stunt by the Macau Tower is in stark

contrast to the white tigers in Las Vegas' Mirage Hotel and Casino:

there, the tigers live in a huge open-air environment several stories

high, complete with swimming pool and mountainous terrain.

 

The Macau tiger cubs are the latest attempt by the city's casinos and

entertainment facilities to thrill visitors. Scantily clad dancers

may always stay in fashion, but gambling and women do not create a

well-rounded destination.

 

A huge commercial development on Cotai Strip has already proposed an

underwater casino where gamblers could throw their dice while

counting the sharks swimming by. Since the colloquial Chinese name

for slot machines is 'tiger machine', it was natural that the Macau

Tower should adopt a tiger theme: it unveiled the two white tiger

cubs in its basement adjacent to the so-called Tiger Slots - an array

of more than 200 slot machines.

 

The six-month-old cubs were borrowed from the Panyu Xiangjiang Safari

Park until their return in February next year. They spend about half

the day in a fluorescent-lit indoor display room with an area of 30

square metres. Instead of planting real vegetation, posters showing

green trees were pasted on the wall to make the tigers feel at home.

The animals also have a 54-square-metre outdoor playground.

 

But animals can fall off the public radar here, as a look at Macau's

zoo will show. Jardim da Flora, a leafy 157-year-old park, showcases

a bear, a dozen Macaca mulatta monkeys, and several peacocks and

mandarin ducks.

 

A pair of Tibetan black bears used to be the stars. One was rescued

from a local restaurant before it could be eaten, in the 1980s, and

the other was sent as a gift by Beijing in 1988. But their fame

waned. One was sent away because it had problems adapting. The other

one remains here, living in an open-air cage next to a ditch of

green, stagnant water.

 

Let's just hope that when the new, glamorous casinos bring in

spectacular animals, they will take good care of them - whatever the

cost - and educate the public not to bang on their windows while the

animals are sleeping on a Sunday afternoon.