Asian Diaspora Does Vegas: Waves of Working-And First-Class

10.30095/SYJH.200812.0002

Sheng-Mei Ma

亞洲離散 ； 拉斯維加斯 ； 賭博 ； 亞美 ； Asian diaspora ； Las Vegas ； gamble ； Asian American

中山人文學報

26期（2008 / 12 / 01）

17 - 31

英文

當亞洲離散開演時，幾乎都在拉斯維加斯、賭場，或任何有賭博器具的地方上演。拉斯維加斯和諸如此類的地方提供了亞洲離散的大本營。這些地方根本上是冒險遠離家園，走向未知，一場充滿變數和險惡的賭博。縱然可能僥倖贏得賭博，狂喜之餘，卻總被一股強烈和壓抑的情感籠罩著，如對家的迷惘，身分認同，或甚至是年少時對太平洋另一端的憧憬。這種賭博的主題常出現在跨太平洋的文學和電影中，或是在亞美和華人離散的文本、此現象最早是從十九世紀從廣東一舉發掏金熱而遠到舊金山致富的熱潮開始（金山就是指舊金山或是廣義的美國），爾後到大戰期間，戰後旅居終其一生沉醉在賭場，一直到當代韓國風隨著拉斯維加斯開始和結束，而最後又反轉這股熱潮，反在中國南方澳門特區如雨後春筍般可見附屬拉斯維加斯賭場。

When Asian Diaspora plays, it oftentimes comes to Las Vegas or any casino or venue with gaming devices. Las Vegas and the like provide the culmination of Asian Diaspora, which is, in essence, taking risks in casting oneself out of home and into the unfamiliar, a gamble in view of all the variables and pitfalls. The euphoria of possible winning is always haunted by the keen or repressed sense of loss over homeland, identity, or even youthful dream on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. The gaming motif in trans-Pacific literature and film, or in ethnic Asian American and Asian diasporic texts, ranges from the earliest wave of nineteenth-century Cantonese dreaming of striking it rich at the Gold Mountain (Gumsan for San Francisco or America more broadly), to the wave of war-time and postwar sojourners whose lifelong itinerary revolves around gambling houses, to a classic in the contemporary Korean Wave which opens and ends with Las Vegas, and finally to the reverse flow to the mushrooming, Vegas-affiliated casinos in the Macau Special Administration Region in Southern China.

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