All over the world, Chinese are celebrating the year of the rat. Here’s what Las Vegas is expecting:
“Peter Miao and his family were posing for photos with a 5-foot-tall rat, and there wasn’t a single Disney theme park in sight.
Miao, standing in the cavernous conservatory at the Bellagio casino-resort, said he brought his wife and daughter from Hong Kong specifically to celebrate Chinese New Year in Las Vegas. And to pose with a rat.
“People are pretty wealthy now in China, so they can afford to come over here,” said Miao, basking in the artificial light reflecting off an 18-foot God of Wealth and Fortune statue to his right. “They don’t know a lot about Las Vegas; that’s why they want to come here, to see.”
There’s an odd symmetry to celebrating the Lunar New Year in a town where night is more sacred than day, where English isn’t as common as the language of luck, and where you can begin the Year of the Rat in the Land of the Rat Pack.
“Everybody wants to come, not only me,” said Miao.
And Las Vegas is encouraging them.
While there are no precise numbers, tourism officials here estimate tens of thousands of Asian and Asian American visitors – from the Bay Area, Beijing and many places between and beyond – are ringing in Lunar Year 4706 not in their homes with large extended families, but in Sin City, where extravagant feasts, themed entertainment and, yes, a little gambling fit in with long-held traditions for the holiday.
OK, a lot of gambling.
Casino owners, firm believers that you make your own luck, have been raising the stakes each year – elaborate exhibits; banners around every corner wishing good fortune, prosperity, long life; concerts by pop stars from Taiwan; lion dances; and culinary festivals with food prepared and served by staffs flown from Beijing – to make sure that, win or lose, guests still feel lucky.
By the time this year’s 15-day celebration is over – the period between the new moon and full moon, Feb. 7-21 – thousands of visitors will have filed through the Bellagio’s Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, where the God of Wealth and the 5-foot rat are flanked by a traditional pagoda, a scene of jagged mountain country, oversize incense burners and a koi pond with a zigzag bridge. (Evil spirits, it turns out, are not adept at navigating corners.) “
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