HIGH RISCK [154 a 156]

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HIGH RISCK

Out of the many bad habits—like drinking, smoking, fighting, and cursing—that I picked up while I was a young stuntman, one thing stood out as the worst. 

Every day, I risked my life for a fistful of dollars. 

And almost every night, I risked my pay—all the money my dangerous job had earned me, and more—on games of chance. One evening, it might be mah-jongg. Another night, it might be betting on billiards. HK$100 a ball, HK$1000 a game. And still other nights, my stuntman friends and I might find our ways to the smoky, back-alley rooms where the craziest game of all was played: pai gow—the game of “heavenly dominoes.” 

When my father had left me at the airport that day so many years ago, he’d given me three words of caution: Don’t do drugs. Don’t join a Triad gang. And don’t gamble. 

I guess two out of three isn’t so bad. 

Now, when my dad told me not to gamble, I know he didn’t mean it; that is to say, he knew that I’d make bets or play cards, just for fun, just to be with the guys. Everyone did that. 

Pai gow was different.

In pai gow, there are no limits. 

When you play mah-jongg, okay, even if you lose all night, you might lose HK$20,000. Play—and lose—for three straight days, you might lose HK$2 million. 

A losing night in pai gow could mean you owed HK$10 million. Even HK$100 million. And the people you’d owe the money to usually wouldn’t be the type who’d let you pay them by installment. Pai gow destroys families, breaks marriages, and ruins lives. My father knew this and avoided the game like the plague. 

But in our world, if you showed fear, you showed weakness. To be lung fu mo shi, we couldn’t afford not to take risks.

It’s easy to get into a pai gow game. It’s very, very hard to get out. 

Let me explain the rules. The game uses a set of thirty-two dominoes, made of ivory or plastic. The dealer gives you and your fellow players four dominoes each. These have to be arranged into two hands of two 

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dominoes—a front hand and a back hand. One of the players acts as banker, putting a certain amount of money that he’s willing to risk on the table, and taking “action” (accepting bets) from the other players up to that amount. The banker compares his hands to those of the other players; to win the game, you have to beat your opponent both front and back. (Winning on only one or the other is considered a draw, although the banker wins exact ties.) 

What makes the game really scary is that even people who aren’t actually playing can put “action” on the table. And if you recklessly shout out, “Cover all!” meaning you’ll take as much action as people can give, you can end up facing a table worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

When I was banker, I took action from everyone. Sometimes I won. Sometimes I lost. But every game I played, I put more money on the table than I earned in a month. And when I came out ahead, I’d put it down again. And again. And again. 

Soon I had another nickname, to go along with Double: Yeh Fu Pai. Which was short for Yao li yeh fu pai, shei geng shei lai—meaning “you gamble with everyone you meet.” 

There were nights when I had to be dragged away from the tables by my friends, kicking and screaming. There were days when I woke up in the morning, broke, hungry, and hungover, vowing that I would never gamble again. Nothing mattered, and nothing helped. As soon as someone flashed a wad of cash or suggested a “friendly” round of mah-jongg, I’d be counting my change and wondering if I could borrow enough to get back in the game. 

At that time, when the stunt business was at its peak, I was making around HK$3,000 a month—plenty for a young, single guy to live on. Determined to stay away from gambling and save some money (not to mention my soul), one night I left my friends early and headed home alone. I’d gone to the bank that day to take out money to pay back my building manager, who’d helped me through a period of bad losses with a no-questions-asked loan. 

But as soon as I stepped off of the Star Ferry and set foot in Kowloon, I felt the same Old sizzle in the air: fast games. High risk. Big money. As hard as I tried to walk toward my apartment, I felt myself being drawn in the direction of an old familiar alley, where I knew I’d find the hottest action in town.

It’s still early, I said to myself. I might as well stand around and watch. I don’t have to bet. 

Two hours later, my sleeves were rolled up, and the HK$3000 I had in my pocket was stacked in front of me, telling the packed room that I had the action, and I was willing to take them on. 

“Just three thousand dollars?” shouted one drunk player, tossing his 

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bankroll on the table. His stake was nearly HK$10,000. Soon other players and bystanders threw their money down too, as if to tell me that a young kid like me had no business in a room full of real players. Twenty thousand dollars. Thirty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars.

Soon I faced a table heavy with cash—almost $12,000 in Hong Kong money. More money than I’d ever seen in my life. More money than I thought I could ever earn in my career. 

But I’ve never been able to turn down a challenge. Even though a voice inside my head was screaming at me, telling me to walk away—or run—I found myself saying the two words no one expected to hear. 

“Cover all.”

One hundred twenty thousand dollars! Three times what my entire apartment was worth! And I was telling the crowd that I’d take them on, all of them, and that I could afford to lose. 

The dealer looked at me with a hard glare, and then passed out the dominoes. I guess God, or my ancestors, or luck—whatever you happen to believe in—was on my side that night. I kept my face straight as I looked at my four pieces, and realized that I had a perfect front hand, gee joon, the “supreme combination,” and an almost perfect back hand. 

I was unbeatable. Which meant I would soon be rich beyond my wildest dreams. 

The dealer turned over my tiles and sucked in his breath. The other players howled. But as I started to rake in the stack of cash, I felt a thick hand on my shoulder. I turned to see the ugly face of the club’s “enforcer,” probably the biggest Chinese guy I’d ever seen in my life. 

“Show me the money,” he grunted, his voice low and dangerous. 

I shrugged, and pointed to my winnings. 

“Not that,” he said. “You said, ‘Cover all,’ right? So you’d better have enough money in your pockets to make the bet, kid.” 

My eyes nearly popped out of my head. “But I won!” 

The enforcer leaned into me, squeezing my shoulder in his fist. “You don’t want to be telling me that you made a bet without being able to cover, do you?”

A few minutes later, I found myself being thrown out into the alley, rubbing my sore shoulder and picking up stray bills that had come loose from my $3000 wad. 

If I were a better person, after that night, I would have learned my lesson and stopped gambling forever. I can’t say that’s true—but at least I never did anything that stupid again. 

In my movies I beat up people twice my size, and fight entire crowds at once. 

I don’t think I’d enjoy seeing if I could do the same in real life.