Chinese men smoke.
From the age of about 15, Chinese men smoke. It's like a rite of passage. Learning to ride a bike, getting braces, smoking.
There's nothing abnormal about it in China, especially in the countryside. Women, who rarely smoke, don't seem to mind it. I've never seen a woman wave away the smoke or scoff at the smell (and Chinese cigarettes REEK; I don't know what's different, but they smell terrible).
The culture is so prevalent that there are different classes of cigarettes. Yes, in a country so proud of its Communist government, even cigarettes are divided. I've seen cigs that cost Y150 (more than $20).
Don't worry. The habbit of most Chinese men is maintained by Y3 packs. And the lack of taxes on tobacco products.
When I lived in Dong Yang, Mr. Li, an avid smoker, passed around his Y100 packs of Pandas at every opportunity. He told me one day that he didn't think that smoking was bad for him. His reasoning? Chairman Mao was a heavy smoker.
I looked it up. Chairman Mao didn't die of a tobacco related illness. Maybe there is some logic in his twisted notion.
The culture extends to young people as well. Even my university students are not immune. For reasons unknown, we have a five minute break in my 1.5 hour classes. During this break, almost all of the boys rush to the windows in the halls for a nicotine fix.
There is a very popular local band called the Carsick Cars. They play in the university area of Beijing all the time. One of their most exciting and well-known songs is called "Zhong Nan Hai". This is the brand of the cigarettes of choice for most foreigners and young people in China. You can find a video of them playing this song at D-22 (a bar in Beijing) with the audience throwing cigarettes (I'm guessing Zhong Nan Hais) at the stage.
There is no such thing as no smoking in this Beijing. On a bus ride from Lijiang to Dali, a Chinese young man sitting between Ilan and me lit up. My friend Case has made pals with security guards by simultaneously smoking under "NO SMOKING" signs in malls. Often, men have cigarettes in their mouths before they mount the escalators out of the subways.
But all of this is supposed to change soon. Beijing, like most cities in the United States and Western Europe, has issued a ban on smoking in most public places. This isn't as extensive at the ban in Baton Rouge that extends 25 feet outside government institutions, schools, and libraries, but it's something.
It might work. They issued a similar ban in taxis back in about October, and it was -- amazingly -- successful.
But they tried to ban smoking in restaurants around the same time. It was an optional ban. Only one restaurant complied. It went out of business.
