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妈阁是座城（严歌苓最新长篇小说，讲述一个让人感叹唏嘘的赌场故事）
严歌苓这一次写了一个离我们很近的故事。《妈阁是座城》可谓是赌的惊心动魄、赌得触目惊心。书中的当代赌徒为中外文学贡献了崭新的人物形象。天之骄子段凯文何以会走进赌场？颓唐的风度甚至能吸引诱导赌场马仔和偷渡蛇头的艺术家史奇澜，他天才的灵性终将毁灭抑或拯救他自己？但其实作为赌场中的另一极、两性世界里的阴性，梅晓鸥才是一个**的赌徒，她用青春赌爱情、她用情感赌人性，赌到血本无归，所有她为之奋斗和追求的都离她而去，金钱没了，房子卖了；爱人离开了；她**的纵火行为虽遏制了儿子走向赌场的路，但终究留下了母子关系的隐忧。这样一个飞蛾扑火的决绝的女人，却是个矛盾之集成体。严歌苓赋予了她极大的心理空间，这个在旁观者看来冷酷嗜血的赌场掮客，她的女性与母性一再地背离了她的职业要求，将赌客与叠码仔之间原本简单的输赢关系搞到错综复杂、是非莫辨。这是迄今为止严歌苓贡献的一个比王葡萄（《第九个寡妇》）、多鹤（《小姨多鹤》）、冯婉喻（《陆犯焉识》）都要复杂、灰色、不那么非此即彼的女性形象。
- GenresChina
Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 22, 2022
For most people, the world of gambling either conjures up glamourous Hollywood movies, like James Bond and Ocean’s 11, or grimy old men in bookkeeper shops betting on the horses. This novel by Yan Geling gives us a mixture here by portraying the stories of big rollers in China, but lifting up their masks and exposing the grubby little men lying beneath, body odor and all.
We’re introduced to the protagonist, a middle-aged single mother living in Macau called Xiao’ou, through a story of how gambling runs in her blood, with the tragic tale of her male ancestor’s addiction. This eventually led to him taking his life and, as a result, his wife became obsessed with wiping out the male line of her family to ensure the defective gambling gene wasn’t passed down.
From there we jump to Xiao’ou’s current job as a junket operator/bate-ficha (壘碼仔/ Cantonese: daap6 ma5 zai2) in Macau; basically, these are the middlemen who bring high-rollers into casinos. Topically enough, while I was penning this review, this story emerged, giving an insight into the real world goings-on behind this fictional account.
We gradually come to learn that despite her supposed scorn for gamblers, Xiao’ou is gambling by proxy, in that she borrows money from the casino on behalf of her clients, and then has to chase up the money with them after paying the casino back on their behalf. She also offers clients the option to treble or quadruple the actual chips on the table, in an under-the-table bet with her, which makes the stakes even higher. Many are subsequently unable to pay and she risks losing big if other debtors collect from the clients before she can.
Two of her clients occupy the majority of the narrative of the book, Duan Kaiwen and Shi Qilan. Despite her attachment to them, the two men seem to share a sociopathic veneer of social grace masking extreme disregard for the people in their lives. While Shi is both an old client and old flame who has already fallen on desperate times by the time the novel opens, Duan is a new client for Xiao’ou. At first, the relationship between her and Duan is quite flirtatious and cordial, but as he gradually reveals the inveterate gambler underneath his facade of sophistication and fails to make good on his promises of payment, their relationship descends into a bitter rivalry. Duan, an architect of some renown, continues to get deeper and deeper into debt, whilst hiding his addiction from his family. Eventually, he abandons his wife (who subsequently has a stroke) and children, moving to North America to escape debt collectors. Things get worse for Shi Qilan too, as, after he loses his wood carving business, his wife leaves him, taking their son with her.
We gradually come to realize, that, where, at the start of the novel, we were observing Shi and Duan in contrast to the protagonist, she is, in fact, very similar to them. She misses out on her son’s life, just to accompany the gamblers with whom she has a strange fixation. There is one point in the novel where this becomes very clear. Despite her fellow bate-ficha Laomao urging her to recoup debts owed by Duan Kaiwen, she instead chooses to continue watching as he gambles more and more:
「她擔心段凱文此刻收手。已經差不多夠還她的債了，他完全可以收手。假如他收了，曉鷗看懸念片的興奮和快感、緊張和驚悚就被釜底抽薪。那她就沒機會看段凱文墮落到底，把人渣做到極致了。假如他馬上就還曉鷗的錢，連本帶利，就可以找回他一向的傲慢莊嚴。
“She was worried that Duan Kaiwen would resign just then. He already had around enough to repay his debt to her, so he could just quit. If he did, it would put an end to the excitement, pleasure, tension and thrills Xiao’ou was getting from this cliff-hanger. And she wouldn’t have the opportunity to see Duan Kaiwen fall from grace and become a fully-fledged scumbag. If he returned Xiao’ou’s money right away, principal and interest included, he would recoup with it his haughty sense of pride.
《媽閣是座城》初版，嚴歌苓著，麥田城邦文化出版，初版，2016年8月，234頁 // MY TRANSLATION
There is a sort of dialectic at play, we discover, in which Xiao’ou thinks she’s taking revenge on gamblers, invoking the name of her female ancestor; but in her persecution of them she becomes a mirror image of them. Despite her incredible insight into how the minds of gamblers work, Xiao’ou doesn’t seem to catch herself enmeshed in precisely the same logic:
無非贏了幾手，便自認為找到了感覺，看出了路數，接下去把偶然的贏當成必然，把必然的輸當成偶然。想想吧，一個顛倒了偶然和必然的人會一有什麼結局？就是必然的犧牲品。
Especially when you win a few hands, you’ll think you’ve got a feel for it, that you can see a strategy, then you see what happened by chance as inevitable, and see what’s inevitable as chance. Think about it, how will it end for someone who has confused chance for the inevitable? They are the inevitable sacrificial lambs.
《媽閣是座城》初版，嚴歌苓著，麥田城邦文化出版，初版，2016年8月，216頁 // MY TRANSLATION
Xiao’ou seems to thrive on being owed, as Shi states towards the end of the novel, after the two of them have become lovers:
「你為什麼老要別人虧欠你呢？！」他有點生氣了。
「我沒讓別人虧我……」
「你就讓我虧欠你，永遠還不清你，把人家都變成乞丐，你永遠做施主……」
“Why do you always want people to owe you?!” He was a little angry.
“I don’t make them owe me…”
“You made me owe you, and I’ll never be able to pay you back. You turn other people into beggars, and you’re forever their patron…”
《媽閣是座城》初版，嚴歌苓著，麥田城邦文化出版，初版，2016年8月，343頁 // MY TRANSLATION
She eventually sees her own fixation with gambling when she catches her son at a casino with a group of friends in Macau. She realizes that she is largely responsible for exposing her son to the world of gambling and sees a sort of karma in learning that he has inherited the gambling gene.
她以為幹上疊碼仔的行當是報復盧晉桐，是替梅吳娘報復梅大榕，現在她自己得到報應了。
She thought that by working as a bate-ficha she was getting revenge on Lu Jintong (her estranged husband), and getting revenge on (her male ancestor) Mei Darong on behalf of (her female ancestor) Mei Wuniang, but now she’d gotten her comeuppance.
《媽閣是座城》初版，嚴歌苓著，麥田城邦文化出版，初版，2016年8月，350頁 // MY TRANSLATION
https://www.translatingtaiwan.com/202...
We’re introduced to the protagonist, a middle-aged single mother living in Macau called Xiao’ou, through a story of how gambling runs in her blood, with the tragic tale of her male ancestor’s addiction. This eventually led to him taking his life and, as a result, his wife became obsessed with wiping out the male line of her family to ensure the defective gambling gene wasn’t passed down.
From there we jump to Xiao’ou’s current job as a junket operator/bate-ficha (壘碼仔/ Cantonese: daap6 ma5 zai2) in Macau; basically, these are the middlemen who bring high-rollers into casinos. Topically enough, while I was penning this review, this story emerged, giving an insight into the real world goings-on behind this fictional account.
We gradually come to learn that despite her supposed scorn for gamblers, Xiao’ou is gambling by proxy, in that she borrows money from the casino on behalf of her clients, and then has to chase up the money with them after paying the casino back on their behalf. She also offers clients the option to treble or quadruple the actual chips on the table, in an under-the-table bet with her, which makes the stakes even higher. Many are subsequently unable to pay and she risks losing big if other debtors collect from the clients before she can.
Two of her clients occupy the majority of the narrative of the book, Duan Kaiwen and Shi Qilan. Despite her attachment to them, the two men seem to share a sociopathic veneer of social grace masking extreme disregard for the people in their lives. While Shi is both an old client and old flame who has already fallen on desperate times by the time the novel opens, Duan is a new client for Xiao’ou. At first, the relationship between her and Duan is quite flirtatious and cordial, but as he gradually reveals the inveterate gambler underneath his facade of sophistication and fails to make good on his promises of payment, their relationship descends into a bitter rivalry. Duan, an architect of some renown, continues to get deeper and deeper into debt, whilst hiding his addiction from his family. Eventually, he abandons his wife (who subsequently has a stroke) and children, moving to North America to escape debt collectors. Things get worse for Shi Qilan too, as, after he loses his wood carving business, his wife leaves him, taking their son with her.
We gradually come to realize, that, where, at the start of the novel, we were observing Shi and Duan in contrast to the protagonist, she is, in fact, very similar to them. She misses out on her son’s life, just to accompany the gamblers with whom she has a strange fixation. There is one point in the novel where this becomes very clear. Despite her fellow bate-ficha Laomao urging her to recoup debts owed by Duan Kaiwen, she instead chooses to continue watching as he gambles more and more:
「她擔心段凱文此刻收手。已經差不多夠還她的債了，他完全可以收手。假如他收了，曉鷗看懸念片的興奮和快感、緊張和驚悚就被釜底抽薪。那她就沒機會看段凱文墮落到底，把人渣做到極致了。假如他馬上就還曉鷗的錢，連本帶利，就可以找回他一向的傲慢莊嚴。
“She was worried that Duan Kaiwen would resign just then. He already had around enough to repay his debt to her, so he could just quit. If he did, it would put an end to the excitement, pleasure, tension and thrills Xiao’ou was getting from this cliff-hanger. And she wouldn’t have the opportunity to see Duan Kaiwen fall from grace and become a fully-fledged scumbag. If he returned Xiao’ou’s money right away, principal and interest included, he would recoup with it his haughty sense of pride.
《媽閣是座城》初版，嚴歌苓著，麥田城邦文化出版，初版，2016年8月，234頁 // MY TRANSLATION
There is a sort of dialectic at play, we discover, in which Xiao’ou thinks she’s taking revenge on gamblers, invoking the name of her female ancestor; but in her persecution of them she becomes a mirror image of them. Despite her incredible insight into how the minds of gamblers work, Xiao’ou doesn’t seem to catch herself enmeshed in precisely the same logic:
無非贏了幾手，便自認為找到了感覺，看出了路數，接下去把偶然的贏當成必然，把必然的輸當成偶然。想想吧，一個顛倒了偶然和必然的人會一有什麼結局？就是必然的犧牲品。
Especially when you win a few hands, you’ll think you’ve got a feel for it, that you can see a strategy, then you see what happened by chance as inevitable, and see what’s inevitable as chance. Think about it, how will it end for someone who has confused chance for the inevitable? They are the inevitable sacrificial lambs.
《媽閣是座城》初版，嚴歌苓著，麥田城邦文化出版，初版，2016年8月，216頁 // MY TRANSLATION
Xiao’ou seems to thrive on being owed, as Shi states towards the end of the novel, after the two of them have become lovers:
「你為什麼老要別人虧欠你呢？！」他有點生氣了。
「我沒讓別人虧我……」
「你就讓我虧欠你，永遠還不清你，把人家都變成乞丐，你永遠做施主……」
“Why do you always want people to owe you?!” He was a little angry.
“I don’t make them owe me…”
“You made me owe you, and I’ll never be able to pay you back. You turn other people into beggars, and you’re forever their patron…”
《媽閣是座城》初版，嚴歌苓著，麥田城邦文化出版，初版，2016年8月，343頁 // MY TRANSLATION
She eventually sees her own fixation with gambling when she catches her son at a casino with a group of friends in Macau. She realizes that she is largely responsible for exposing her son to the world of gambling and sees a sort of karma in learning that he has inherited the gambling gene.
她以為幹上疊碼仔的行當是報復盧晉桐，是替梅吳娘報復梅大榕，現在她自己得到報應了。
She thought that by working as a bate-ficha she was getting revenge on Lu Jintong (her estranged husband), and getting revenge on (her male ancestor) Mei Darong on behalf of (her female ancestor) Mei Wuniang, but now she’d gotten her comeuppance.
《媽閣是座城》初版，嚴歌苓著，麥田城邦文化出版，初版，2016年8月，350頁 // MY TRANSLATION
https://www.translatingtaiwan.com/202...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 23, 2020
18年第四十八本。叶沙推荐。故事嵌套很熟练，梅晓鸥也是个赌徒，赌人而已。最大的败笔是女主的性格，与钱相伴十载，对人性早就磨的透透的了，哪里这么多的情感，如同一锅泡发的面一样臃肿
December 4, 2025
Geling Yan is a significant contemporary Chinese-language author, noted for her portrayals of contemporary China. I was amazed by her work "The Criminal Lu Yanshi", but this novel fell short of my expectations. I am not sure whether my discomfort stems from the theme of gambling, the characters themselves - with their genuinely incorrigible and morally vacant mentality, or their profit logic and conduct strike me as genuinely sordid.
But I guess this might be the real life of certain people, like junket operators and gamblers who are unable exercise self-restraint. This is also the first time I have learned about the occupation of junket operator and their amoral principles. Maybe I shouldn't impose my own moral framework when reading. It is a tragic novel anyway and the dark side of Macau, OR perhaps it reflects the city's more uncomfortable realities?
If you are interested in Macau or the gambling culture, it is worth reading. Ultimately, it was merely an average book for me.
But I guess this might be the real life of certain people, like junket operators and gamblers who are unable exercise self-restraint. This is also the first time I have learned about the occupation of junket operator and their amoral principles. Maybe I shouldn't impose my own moral framework when reading. It is a tragic novel anyway and the dark side of Macau, OR perhaps it reflects the city's more uncomfortable realities?
If you are interested in Macau or the gambling culture, it is worth reading. Ultimately, it was merely an average book for me.
July 9, 2021
远离赌博🎲珍爱生命
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews