She can’t think about her childhood without remembering often being left for hours in Atlantic City casinos
From Philadelphia, PA - Lai Har Cheung was in kindergarten when her Chinese parents – a seamstress and cook who spoke no English – began dragging the kids to Caesars and dumping them in the casino arcade.
“They’d give us a roll of quarters to play video games,” she recalls, “and leave us to wait and wait.”At just 7, Cheung cared for her 5-year-old sister and toddler brother while her parents blew money better spent on household repairs. In casinos that had no arcades, the kids sat in lobbies for hours with strict orders to stay put.
Cheung cringed as her mother fell prey to a hard sell that played into her heritage and isolation.”All the marketing materials came to our house in Chinese,” she recalls. “One time, my grandmother told us to come down because the casino was serving congee, a rice porridge Asians eat for breakfast. I thought, ‘Oh, my God! They’re even making familiar food to get us there and make us stay.’ ”
The family spent so much time in casinos that Cheung, a Bryn Mawr graduate now in her 30s, says, “I can’t think about my childhood without thinking about Atlantic City.” Fond memories they aren’t, but they did inspire her to protest a proposed Chinatown casino and to keep agitating about SugarHouse.
”Once my mom started going to the casinos, I lost her,” Cheung laments. “She was around physically, but her mental state and emotional availability were gone.”