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Russian SARS Scare Keeps Chinese Gamblers Away

"There is no faux Great Pyramid, just a nondescript room with seven slot machines, a roulette wheel and three poker tables. No luxury hotel soars above the betting parlor.

"…But most of all on this May evening, the Las Vegas is not Las Vegas because there are no gamblers. At 10 p.m. in downtown Blagoveshchensk, barely a half dozen forlorn figures are feeding the slots or placing bets, compared with 30 on an ordinary night.

"More telling still, only one of them is Chinese

"`We like to gamble with the Russians,' that one Chinese man, 21-year-old Li Yanchou, a student at a Blagoveshchensk teachers' institute, said between bets. `Tourists, businessmen who have money -- a lot of them would like to come here. But they're not.'

"That is bad news for the Las Vegas -- and for the Casino Macao on the opposite corner, the Owl a few steps down Lenin Street, the Amursky a few steps up Lenin Street, the Uzbek Restaurant and Kasino just across Lenin Street, and a half-dozen others.

"Unlikely as it seems, Blagoveshchensk, a down-at-the-heels city of 170,000 in remote southern Siberia, has carved itself a prosperous niche as the mecca for Chinese gamblers.

"Or had, until the ailment a local man was suffering from was tentatively diagnosed in early May as Russia's only known case of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. Faster than you can say `snake eyes,' local border posts snapped shut and the casinos' Chinese clientele all but dried up.

"…`Who could know that this thing would happen?' said the manager of the Macao, who gave her name only as Svetlana. `Usually we rely on tourists. Now the only Chinese here are the ones who live in the city.'

"…Local entrepreneurs made the most of it. The city and outlying areas now have 13 casinos, with three more on the drawing board, all catering to Chinese patrons. There are far more casinos here than anywhere in Russia, save Moscow (population 10 million).

"The area's gambling joints pump more than $1.1 million a year in taxes into government coffers -- not as much as the booming gold mining industry, but enough to make gambling one of the major businesses in Amur province.

"…Gambling is illegal in most of China, and while underground betting parlors thrive there, a jaunt to Russia is less furtive and perhaps more fun…"

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