In an Upmarket Macao Casino, 1925

Reading Harry Hervey’s 1925 travelogue of his journeys through the Far East, Where Strange Gods Call, I thought his description of an exclusive Chinese casino in Macao quite interesting….

‘After nightfall, when a tiara of lights crowned the bay, Chang led the way to a very exclusive establishment where glazed-paper lanterns heavily ideographed, proclaimed its purpose. The interior presented a scene soaked in thick aqueous blue smoke and enriched by the pungent odour of opium. Around a large table on the lower floor were crowds of middle-class Chinese, swimming in the weird smoke-light like the inhabitants of some undersea cavern. Above, hovering over the encircling rail of a gallery, was a multitude of faces floating in the gloom like misshapen moons. there, said Chang, indicating the faces, were the high-class patrons. Accordingly, we joined them, escorted thither by an attendant. S most elegantly assembly crowded this upper-floor, all men, and dressed in silks and brocades, some standing by the rail, lowering their bets to the table below by means of a basket, and other lounging upon divans, drinking tea or inhaling poppy smoke. The air staggered with the combined richness of opium-fumes and pomaded humanity.’

The casino scene in the French film Macao: L’enfer de du Jeu captures it pretty well