My Years as a Horse-Race Runner in Macau

In 2014, Mai Jinming sneaks from Zhuhai into Macau to save his mother, who has cancer. Under the alias "A Wen," he becomes a lowly casino chip runner. Beneath the neon lights of the Lisboa Hotel, he exchanges chips for customers and keeps watch over their games. He sees high rollers throw away fortunes before jumping to their deaths, an actress trade her body for career opportunities, and scions of wealthy families set traps and kill to fight over an inheritance.

Loaded dice, shady cross-border money laundering accounts, the blood and tears of women in the sex trade, and a cheat's severed hand drag him from being a poor boy trying to earn money to save his mother's life into a mire of desire. When the only kindness he knew disappears with Uncle Chen's death and his fellow villager A Ling falls into ruin, he clutches his mother's old photograph and finally sees the truth: there are no winners in Macau's casinos. The only real win is making it out alive.