The Great Game

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But though Stanley Ho may have lost a hand or two, he's not ready to fold. In fact, his companies are benefiting from the boom. "If it was not for the American operators coming in, we would never have gotten into the limelight that's putting us on the world map," says Pansy. "The market itself is expanding." Stanley is leveraging his long-established ties to Hong Kong and mainland high rollers to keep his casinos full, while using some razzle-dazzle of his own. Next to the Sands, he is constructing a theme park called Fisherman's Wharf, featuring a faux African village, a Chinese fort, a Mississippi steamboat hotel and a towering erupting volcano. Near his flagship hotel, the rundown Lisboa, he's building the $250 million Grand Lisboa. Pansy inked an agreement with MGM Mirage to open a major hotel-casino. And in November, Stanley formed a joint venture with Kerry Packer, Australia's richest man, to build casinos all over Asia. The two already broke ground in December on another project, the $190 million Park Hyatt Hotel on Taipa. In a recent CNN interview, Stanley boasted: "For the past 40 years I have never made so much money in my life."

Yet many in Macau wonder whether the good times will ruin the city's laid-back ambiance—and whether the boom will come to an abrupt end. Businessmen say the government will have to throw Macau open to imported workers to keep the casinos running, which could drastically transform the life of the city. Finding an empty taxi in Macau these days is difficult. Sensitive to the concerns that the territory's colonial charm will be buried under a mountain of glitz, Edmund Ho is recycling gambling taxes into preserving Macau's historic monuments. In one planned project, the government will rip up a soccer field to create a colonial-style plaza, the Tap Seac Square. A theater dating back to 1860 is being restored and will reopen early this year for performances. Macau has also submitted 12 of its historic sites, including St. Paul's Cathedral, for UNESCO World Heritage status.

If you think that all this smells of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds—you know, Dutch tulips, Y2K—you're not alone. There are plenty of economists who fret that exuberance in Macau has gone too irrational, especially in the property sector. Salter, the former Sands' manager, encountered a man with a suitcase full of cash going door to door in his Taipa apartment building, offering to buy flats on the spot. "There is so much interest in Macau at the moment that we can see the early signs of a bubble forming," warns David Faulkner, a director at Colliers in Hong Kong.

Still, the combination of China's economic explosion and Vegas glitz makes Macau's immediate future seem too exciting to worry about bubbles—unless it's those in your champagne or your Jacuzzi. "It's like Kevin Costner's Field of Dreams," says Herculano de Sousa, CEO of Banco Nacional Ultramarino in Macau. "Build it and they will come." So how big will Macau get? Bigger than Vegas, baby.