In Greater Boston’s Asian communities, gambling can build social ties — and fuel addiction. Here’s how residents are fighting back.

Frank Poon and Lisa Tong performed their duet “A Gambler’s Tale,” a Cantonese opera that tells the story of damage wrought by gambling, inside the Waymark Seventh-day Adventist Church in Dorchester on Dec. 4.(Lane Turner/Globe Staff)

The gatherings were the idea of Frank Poon, a longtime community leader with deep ties in Boston’s South Shore Asian community. He became alarmed by the outsized presence of older Asian men waiting on corners for casino shuttles.

Poon saw the mahjong gatherings as a way to foster discussion about compulsive gambling and its harms within the community. To stimulate dialogue, Poon would stride to the front of the room with a microphone and perform a song about gambling set to the rhythms of a traditional Cantonese opera. The song, called “The Gambler’s Tale,” described one man’s descent into poverty, heartache, and self-loathing.

3/24/26, 11:58 AM Asian communities in Boston fight gambling addiction

https://apps.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/metro/losing-bet/asian-communities-fight-back-gambling/ 20/22

“I am broken! I am scared!” Poon bellows in Cantonese as he sings. “I’m scared that I won’t have money for a plot to bury myself.” But his events came to an abrupt end last fall, when the building’s tenants association raised complaints about the crowds and noise. Disappointed but undeterred, Poon took his message elsewhere, performing at various Asian cultural festivals and senior homes. Sometimes, he shows up in a silk shirt decorated with gambling dice and tears it off in the song’s dramatic final verse, to symbolize the gambler’s break with his destructive past.

“I’ll keep singing that song until I die,” Poon said, “or until the casinos stop targeting my people.”

Boston Globe correspondent Esmy Jimenez contributed reporting.

Original Report:

https://apps.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/metro/losing-bet/asian-communities-fight-back-gambling/