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The endless hum of whirling slot machines washes over the food court at the Sands casino in Bethlehem, as Yuli Cui of Flushing, N.Y., reads a Chinese newspaper.

Huddled at a table with her friends, Cui, 50, plucks a tangerine from the bagged lunch she brought from home. She's been to the casino hundreds of times over the past three years and, like almost every other time, she's doing her best to kill five hours until her bus returns.

Sometimes she walks the scenic path through south Bethlehem or visits the bookshop at Lehigh University, and sometimes she window-shops at the Sands outlet. But one thing she almost never does is gamble.

Instead, she and her husband sell the $45 free-play cards the casino gives them for making the 100-mile bus trip, and they spend the rest of the day absorbing what the Christmas City has to offer until they return home.

For them, riding the casino bus is a job — the only one they can find.

"We can sell our cards for about $1,200 a month," Cui said in Mandarin through an interpreter. "I cannot find a job in Flushing. This is our only income. We come every day. Every day."

Cui is among thousands of bus riders who flood into the Sands on more than 50 buses a day from heavily Asian-populated New York City neighborhoods in Flushing, Chinatown and Brooklyn. Lured by the best casino deal in the region — $45 in free slot play for the price of a $15 bus ticket — hundreds sell their casino cards every day on the underground market moments after stepping off the bus. Many are low-income and some are even homeless, revealing that for some, riding the bus to the Sands is not only a way of life but a way to live.

Others are recently emigrated senior citizens who followed their children to America and find the green spaces surrounding Bethlehem's waterways, the canal path and even Lehigh University's campus a daily respite from their busy concrete neighborhoods in New York.

Some simply like to gamble, and the deal the Sands is offering is better — and closer — than what they can get at casinos in New Jersey or Connecticut.

A few are there to turn the casino odds in their favor. They buy the cards, sometimes dozens a day, at a $5 discount from people like Cui, in the hope of riding back home with a wallet full of winnings.

The steady flow of buses has brought with it a cultural change of sorts on both sides of the route. Back in New York, the urban neighborhoods whose populations are dominated by Asian immigrants have quickly become casino bus towns, where downtown streets are clogged by idling tour buses boarding people en route to Atlantic City, Connecticut and, most frequently, Bethlehem.

On the Bethlehem side of the route, a gentle culture shift has begun as thousands of Asian visitors find the city each day by casino bus, many of them fanning out across the South Side to while away the hours until they return.

It's a phenomenon that's happened quickly, since the Sands casino opened in 2009, and one that becomes more noticeable by the day. It's evident in a handmade shelter with its intricately laid stone path to the Lehigh River, built, according to city police, by Asian bus riders.

It's evident in the group of men who walk a mile from the casino each day to perform tai chi in the park next to the Steelworkers Memorial.

So evident that south Bethlehem's Touchstone Theatre's latest project is "Journey: Dream of the Red Pavilion" — a stage performance portraying how the surge of Asian visitors to Bethlehem is changing the community.

And among the most recent additions to the Lehigh University curriculum is a credited class that partners with Touchstone to follow the emerging trend.

The shift is perhaps most evident in the workforce at the Sands, where more than 425 Chinese-speaking workers have been hired to help welcome a new population of visitors who speak primarily Mandarin, Cantonese or Fujian dialects.

"It's very noticeable on the South Side, and quite interesting, but in a lot of ways it's also rather hidden," said Dongning Wang, a Lehigh adjunct professor teaching a "Journey from the East" class related to the Touchstone production. "Eventually, if it is to continue, they're going to need churches and groceries and maybe even a school. I'll be interested to see if that transition is ever made."

So much change brought on by the pursuit of a tiny plastic card loaded with free casino money.

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