Connoisseurship and Genuflection: The Public Display of Private Wealth in the Casinos of Macau (Part 2)
This essay is the second of a two-part series. Please follow the link to read Part 1.
Genuflection and Patronage
The most prominent public display of private wealth is no doubt the tableau of gems and sculptures placed directly in front of the entrance to the casino of the Grand Lisboa. At the centre is a bust of Stanley Ho himself and a bronze horse head. These are flanked on both sides by glass-encased pedestals displaying an emerald and a diamond each. A large lotus flower acts as a backdrop that unites them. The horse is particularly significant—one of twelve zodiac statues plundered from the imperial Yuanmingyuan Garden by foreign troops during the Opium War in 1860. Ho had bought it from an auction before donating it to the PRC (figure 1).
This tableau fulfills the function of genuflecting to the new political masters of the Macau SAR and the casino industry. After Macau returned to the PRC in 2000, the Beijing government decided to terminate the casino monopoly in the hope that foreign competitors would modernize the local gambling industry and subject it to internationally recognized jurisdiction. In 2003, the government implemented the Individual Visit Scheme that allowed Chinese citizens to travel to Macau and Hong Kong as individual tourists rather than on a business visa or by joining a tour group. This opened the gates for large numbers of Chinese gamblers to travel to Macau, such that by 2012, 7.1 million tourists had made the trip from mainland to Macau under this scheme.[1] Yet, this gate could also be closed. The clampdown on corruption and capital flight by the Beijing government caused gaming revenue to plunge as Chinese gamblers avoided the casinos or moved to other gambling locations like Manila. In this relationship, the casino concessionaires of Macau learnt very quickly to wear their loyalties on their buildings. Steve Wynn, for example, paid $10.2 million for a Ming Dynasty vase, which was eventually donated to the Macau government and placed in a local museum.[2] One of Stanley Ho’s casinos, the Oceanus, is designed to imitate the famous Beijing National Aquatics Centre built for the 2008 Summer Olympics (figure 2).
Figure 1. Tableau of gems and busts, Grand Lisboa, 2010, photograph by author.
The symbolism of Stanley Ho’s donation of the horse head is all the more significant when contextualized against the sale of other zodiac statues plundered from the Yuanmingyuan Garden. Earlier auctions involving these statues were met with resistance from China. In 2000, the auctioning of the monkey, tiger and ox in Hong Kong drew a harsh response from the Chinese government. Eventually, these busts were bought by the Poly Group, an organization closely connected to the People’s Liberation Army, and have since been kept in the Poly Art Museum in Beijing. In 2009, the auctioning of the rat and rabbit in Paris as part of the Yves Saint Laurent collection again drew protests from China. The co-founder of Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Bergé, countered with the condition that China returns autonomy to Tibet and implements human rights. Eventually the auction was voided by a Chinese art dealer who placed the winning bid but refused to pay on moral and patriotic grounds.[3] The statues were retained by the French Pinault family who eventually donated them to China in 2013.
“Yet, mass media, national education, and the fact that these fountain and busts were the few concrete remnants left after years of looting and neglect, transformed them into super-charged symbols of China’s century of humiliation and their rescue tantamount to China’s ascension back to the world stage.”
The lost zodiac busts of Yuanmingyuan had, by 2002, become discursive objects where the ideologies of world heritage intersected with the historical experience of national humiliation.[4] Ironically, the busts and the fountain around which they were arranged were rather minor pieces in the original collection and architecture of the 320-hectare Yuanmingyuan. Yet, mass media, national education, and the fact that the fountain and busts were the few concrete remnants left after years of looting and neglect, transformed them into super-charged symbols of China’s century of humiliation, and their rescue tantamount to China’s ascension back to the world stage. Besides the high stakes battles fought in auction houses, the zodiac busts have morphed and multiplied into other cultural forms. The ruins of the Yuanmingyuan garden have been renovated to become a park where school trips are regularly hosted. Roving exhibitions of the busts as well as extensive news coverage pushed them into popular consciousness. A 2012 movie, Chinese Zodiac, starring action-hero Jackie Chan, tells the story of an art mercenary charged with bringing the lost zodiac busts back to China where they rightfully belonged.
“The lost zodiac busts of Yuanmingyuan had, by 2002, become discursive objects where the ideologies of world heritage intersected with the historical experience of national humiliation.”
In the context of the symbolic excess of these busts, and in contrast with the controversies of 2000 and 2009, Stanley Ho’s interventions were relatively peaceful, but no less significant as diplomatic gestures. In 2003, he quietly bought the pig bust from a New York collector and donated it to China. And in 2007, he intervened in the impending auction of the horse bust and settled for a princely sum of HK$ 69.1 million (USD 8.9 million), twenty-two times over what the owner had paid for in 1989 and breaking the record for Qing dynasty sculptures. Ho declared that he was donating the bust to China, though it remained as an exhibit in the lobby of the Grand Lisboa. Twelve years later, in 2019, Ho took the opportunity of the seventieth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China and the twentieth anniversary of Macau to transfer the horse bust to Beijing where it would be on permanent display at the Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park.[5] Like Jackie Chan’s movie character, Ho and his family purified their immense wealth accumulated from casino gambling—an industry still banned in mainland China on moral and ideological grounds—and transformed from mercenaries into patriots.
On 26 May 2020, Ho passed away at the venerable age of 98, and eulogies poured in from Chinese mainstream media. The pro-Beijing Global Times lauded him as a “patriotic entrepreneur” who rescued cultural relics looted by “foreign imperialists” and whose love for the country and its eventual reunification contrasts with “foreign-backed” secessionist elements in Hong Kong. In death, Ho has transformed into the busts of Yuanmingyuan—a potent locus of cultural pride and revisionist history.
Figure 2. Oceanus Casino, Macau, 2010, photograph by author.
Closing Thoughts
Landscapes of leisure and consumption can also be imbued, however awkwardly, with virtues associated with philanthropy. This extra-economic moral dimension is particularly pertinent to the casino industry in Macau. In return for monopolistic or oligopolistic rights and in order to shed the stigma associated with organized gambling, the industry has always been legally obligated to contribute to social welfare, public infrastructure, education and cultural projects. Though Macau’s transition from a Portuguese colony to a Special Administrative Region under the PRC changed the industry dramatically, the clientelist relationship between the state and the concessionaire remains intact.
The lobbies of the Hotel Lisboa and the Grand Lisboa are a spectacular manifestation of this historical partnership. Interpreting the public display of private wealth in these lobbies coaxes us away from the dominant paradigm of consumerism to think more carefully about the politics of display in a different context. And in turn, we might recognize such politics in places other than casinos. I am led to think about how corporations linked to potential social harm—such as the oil and tobacco industries—contribute to community building under the increasingly strident slogan of “corporate social responsibility.” It is the symbolic transformation of money from “bad” to “good,” more than how capital is “realized,” that illuminates the world from the casino.
“Interpreting the public display of private wealth in these lobbies coaxes us away from the dominant paradigm of consumerism to think more carefully about the politics of display in a different context. ”
Author’s note: The author intends to expand this essay into a chapter for his book project, “The World in a Casino.” He wishes to express his gratitude to Timothy Simpson (University of Macau) for hosting him in 2016 on a visiting fellowship. The fieldwork conducted during the fellowship set him thinking about the “public display of private wealth” in these casinos.
NOTES
[1] Timothy Simpson, “Macau Metropolis and Mental Life: Interior Urbanism and the Chinese Imaginary,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38, no. 3 (2014): 823-842.
[2] Geoffrey A Fowler, “In Macau, Moguls Bet Big on Donated Art”, Wall Street Journal, 21 Sept 2007.
[3] Richard Curtis Kraus, “The Repatriation of Plundered Chinese Art,” The China Quarterly 199 (2009): 837-842.
[4] Annetta Fotopoulos, “Understanding the Zodiac Saga in China: World Cultural Heritage, National Humiliation, and Evolving Narratives,” Modern China 41, no. 6 (2015): 604.
[5] Kaihao Wang, “Horse-head Statue of Old Summer Palace Comes Home,” China Daily, 13 Nov 2019.
