In Macao, Giant Pleasure Domes Are Decreed

The New York Times headline was inspired, of course, by the opening lines of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :

The poem runs another 60 or so lines. As Coleridge explained some time later the entirety of the lines were:

composed, in a sort of Reverie brought on by two grains of Opium taken to check a dysentery, at a Farm House between Porlock & Linton, a quarter of a mile from Culbone Church, in the fall of the year, 1797.

It is also well known that Coleridge was interrupted in his writing by "a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour..." In the process, Coleridge lost his muse and never did get to finish the poem. So it was published as it was: a fragment of 60 lines. Yet I find myself in agreement with many others: if only the unknown person from Porlock had arrived a tad earlier! Why so? Those two opening lines by Coleridge are perfect as they stand.
Whether the pleasure domes of Macao are perfect, however, depends on what you mean by 'perfect'. They are certainly not 'stately'. While the Portuguese ruled Macao, as they did for 400 years or so until 1999, they granted a company fronted by Stanley Ho -- he who had traded with the Japanese during their savage occupation -- a near monopoly on the casino gambling industry. Catering to Hong Kong gamblers, carried back and forth to Macao by Ho's large fleet of fast ferry boats, Stanley, his extended family, and other interested parties including Henry Fok, grew very rich.
But that cosy if occassionally murderous monopoly ended in 1999. Since when, many changes have taken place, and many more are coming. Mega changes. Mainland gamblers -- many with money looted one way or another from what were Chinese state assets or banks -- pour in and party like its 1999. While the spectacular razzmatazz operators of Las Vegas have opened up and they have further mega plans. NYT article (reg. required).