Piculs of Gold

Six-foot, 200-pound Foo Tak-yam last week visited Macao's Buddhist Kuan Yin Temple. His partly pious, partly sensual intention was to smoke opium and contemplate a successful, sinful life that began in peddling doughnuts and culminated in ruling the fabulous gambling industry of the Orient's Monte Carlo. Foo's celebration was under way when three Chinese entered the hilltop pagoda, pulled pistols from their long black gowns and whisked him away in a black sedan. Four days later his son received a preliminary ransom demand: one picul of gold (133 1/3 lbs. in weight, more than $62,000 U.S.).

For Foo a picul of gold was a drop in the bucket; he had reaped one of the polyglot Portuguese colony's biggest fortunes from his teeming salons, where gamblers from nearby Hong Kong and South China came for fan-tan and cusek (played with dice). During the war Foo got into the big time; he cornered Macao's food market. On the profits he kept six concubines in a Macao mansion.

Macao rumor had it that he was sought by both the Chinese Central Government and the Communists as a collaborationist and profiteer. Despite the ransom note, many wondered whether the snatch at Kuan Yin Temple was for profit or politics--or both. At week's end the kidnappers upped the price to six piculs.

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