Vegas Happy to Celebrate Chinese New Year

LAS VEGAS (Feb. 16) -- For the fifth year in a row, Diana Chang and her five adult children stood in the casino of Caesars Palace cheering and snapping photos as three giant dragons shimmied past them, trailed by percussionists pounding out the beats that ring in Chinese New Year.

Chang, a Taiwanese immigrant from Oakland, Calif., used to make a big family dinner at home to celebrate the annual festival. But now her kids are grown and scattered across the U.S., so each year the 63-year-old widow sends them plane tickets to Vegas, where they converge for what has become, to many Asian-Americans, a new tradition.

"At first I would hear my friends say that Las Vegas does Chinese New Year really well and I'd think, 'No, that sounds terrible,'" Chang said. "But, actually, they really go all out and you can gamble, which Chinese people love. It's over-the-top and a lot of fun."

It's also extraordinarily profitable for Las Vegas. Chinese New Year, the 10-day period that generally falls in late January or early February, is now the second-biggest gambling event of the year, resort executives say.

The Chinese New Year festival period technically began on Sunday this year, so Vegas started celebrating the Year of the Tiger on Friday to capture more weekend business.

"Chinese New Year, with the huge growth of the Asian-American population across the country, is becoming as big if not bigger than the Super Bowl," Caesars Palace President Gary Selesner said. "The Super Bowl is a huge domestic event, and Chinese New Year brings them in from here and around the world."

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority does not keep track of the economic impact of the holiday, but Selesner and Wynn Las Vegas President Andrew Pascal say it is an indispensable piece of business.

The city, as Chang noted, goes all out. Hotels like Caesars Palace and the Venetian erect massive banners with the Chinese New Year greeting, "Gung Hay Fat Choy" in Chinese characters. Casinos up and down the Strip are adorned with red Chinese paper lanterns and citrus trees. Major Cantopop stars headline at Caesars' Colosseum and MGM Grand Garden.

At the Palazzo resort, an atrium area this year features a 16.5-foot-long stuffed tiger. Over at the Bellagio, the famous public conservatory boasts a gigantic tiger overlooking a koi pond and gazing at an 18-foot waterfall.

Chinese restaurants all over the city offer special New Year's menus, adding some traditional dishes or renaming existing offerings with lucky or upbeat words.

It's not unusual for a family to spend more than $20,000 for a Chinese New Year dinner, said Richard Chen, the executive chef at the Wing Lei restaurant in the Wynn Las Vegas resort. The restaurant imports abalone at more than $2,000 a pound and bird's nest at $1,600 a pound for the festivities.

At least 15 resorts scheduled lion and dragon dances this week, typically starting out in the porte-cochere, where the costumed dancers light firecrackers before roaming the casino. At the thresholds of high-limit baccarat areas, they dance and fling lettuce, a symbol of prosperity.

Such nods to Asian culture came as hard-learned lessons for Las Vegas properties, which now employ feng shui masters to advise on design and building plans.

When the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino opened in 1993, patrons walked through a main entrance built to resemble the mouth of a mammoth lion, MGM's longtime corporate symbol. This incensed Asian gamblers, who complained -- and stayed away -- because the notion of walking into the mouth of a beast is considered unlucky.

The company spent millions removing the lion and reconfiguring the entrance.

Caesars Palace is the undisputed pioneer in the Chinese New Year effort, creating its first celebration in 1975. That explains why so many flock here.

"I have been coming to Caesars for this maybe since Bill Clinton was the president," said Lily Zeng of Singapore. "Not every year, but if I am able to be in Las Vegas for the new year, I come here. They do it right for a long time."

The relationship between Las Vegas and China has blossomed over the past decade. MGM Mirage, Wynn Resorts and Las Vegas Sands all opened resorts in the Chinese special administrative region of Macau. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority opened a tourism office in Shanghai in 2008.

Macau recently eclipsed Las Vegas as the world's gaming destination with the most wagering, but that seems to have merely whetted the Chinese desire to see Las Vegas. The city greeted about 112,000 Chinese tourists in 2008, up from about 87,000 in 2006, despite there being no direct flights.

Of course, the heavily sought-after Asian high rollers don't need to rely on commercial travel. Resorts like Wynn and Palazzo ferry them across the Pacific in lavish jets and then treat them to private banquets attended by Chinese celebrities and hotel executives.

"China has become a very important market for us," Pascal said. "We have special customers who have come for this event, and we want to entertain and honor them."

That said, it is business, and the Chinese know that as well as anyone. The Vegas version of Chinese New Year is an American concoction, said Rongji Wu, a businessman from Denver who brought his wife here.

"This is nothing like what we did back in China, but it's still a lot of fun," he said over the drumbeat din at Wynn Las Vegas. "And if we lose a few dollars in the casino, well, I guess that makes it a happy new year for them, too."