A big ugly crapshoot

Located just behind an elementary school, the site was a bizarre sort of border station for a wasteland. At the back of the lot was a shed made out of a shipping container, and the yard in front was strewn with construction debris and boat carcasses. The grass had two heights, knee-high and waist-high, and in it there were about a dozen vicious dogs chained to stakes in the ground. Each dog had its own two-to-three-meter radius and none of their circles overlapped. That was so they wouldn't kill each other.

As I walked up, a guy who eventually introduced himself as Yan Chin-tsai (顏金財) heard the barking and ambled out of the shed. Both his hands were bandaged and he was holding a screwdriver. I asked him about the casino. He pointed past the dogs. "The land is just over there, but they've been talking about it for 10 years. Who knows if they'll ever build it."

Yan, a 42-year-old bachelor who fixes boat motors, invited me into the shed to have tea along with his two older brothers, Big Brother and Second Brother. Both were out-of-work fishermen.

In recent years, Penghu's most serious economic downturn has been in its fishing industry, the staple industry for most of the 1,200 years since Penghu was settled by the Chinese. By 2000, a depleted, overfished Strait and new schemes in fish farming had reduced the 12,000 fishermen that were 30 percent of Penghu's work force in 1990 to only about 2,000, or 6 percent of job holders. Once the only industry on Penghu, fishing and fisheries are becoming increasingly peripheral and there's no replacement in sight.

Gambling? "Yeah, sure. Why not." said Yan.

At this point, I'd been in Penghu about 18 hours and had asked this question to 15 people. None had hesitated. All were for it. But many qualified their answers, saying that it was a hard debate and that Penghu islanders were split half and half on it. I was beginning to doubt it. I asked the Yan brothers where in Penghu I could find people who were anti-gambling, or if there really were any?

"I don't know. There aren't any," said Yan. "Oh wait, the Legislative Yuan!"

On top of everything there was a pervasive feeling that no matter what they wanted, the decision would not be theirs. It would be made by Taipei politicians.

This sentiment was ingrained in the Yan brothers and in every other Penghu resident I met.

The first opponent to gambling I encountered -- and by this time I was searching for one -- was back in Makung a few hours later. She was 18 years old and a recent high school graduate, and she explained herself simply. "Penghu is still pure and untouched, not like Taiwan. Gambling will make everything here complicated," she said.

She'd be leaving Penghu to attend junior college in a few weeks.

The others gambling opponents I found were similar: teenage girls who ached for the city life.

I said before that my demographics are grossly incomplete, and this small sample shows it. But what these girls have in common with President Chen's Cabinet is that while they're against gambling, they don't really want to live in Penghu either.

Meanwhile, 83,000 residents face the financial concerns of a barren economy, and that is a problem nobody is addressing. Maybe it's about time.