China and Smoking
I wasn’t a smoker until I went to China. Anyone who knew me before I left will tell you; I didn’t smoke. My breath was sweet. I spent entire days briskly hiking high altitude trails, and my lungs worked beautifully. Cut to now. I am back from China. The slight incline from my car to the front of my house causes an unnatural wheezing sound…in stereo, making me stop and look around because I never think that sound could be coming from me.
I have always looked down on smokers. I’ve never as been pretentious about it, as say, ex-smokers tend to be. I mean, I never was rude about it, but always in the back of my mind, I saw it as a type of weakness. Come on, how are you going to admit something is disgusting and could ultimately cause your demise, yet still continue to do it? When I first arrived in China, I was bombarded with offers to smoke.
I am from North Carolina (where tobacco is the second biggest cash crop after cannabis sativa because we care about alternative energy sources). I have been to NASCAR races, where even ten years ago they used to hand out Winstons, Skoal, and Red Man to anybody with a mouth. However, I have never had as much tobacco pushed on me as my first month in China. Now granted, I spent most of my first few months in smaller villages and towns. City people in China, probably still smoke at the same rate, but don’t feel as strongly that you need to join in. I was resolute and did not smoke. After I had been in China for about eight months, I still was offered a lot of smokes, but by then my Chinese was good enough to explain to people that I didn’t smoke, and I was able to joke it away. Also, by then most Chinese who were my friends knew I didn’t smoke, so it was no big deal.
Liang Bing’s cousin (with cig) was my first smoking mentor
After repeatedly waking up to sunny days and perfect weather in Hainan for eight months, I decided I needed to mix things up a bit and took a trip to cold, cold Anhui in January to my friend Liang Bing’s hometown, Wuhe. The town was small. I was literally the first foreigner to visit the town since the Japanese in the thirties, and that didn’t turn out so well. Liang’s family ran the little village outside the town, and soon I was invited to a different house for every lunch and dinner for a solid month. For one month straight, I did nothing but shiver, sleep and eat. I didn’t understand their dialect of Chinese as well. They didn’t understand my broken, Hainan-influenced Mandarin that well either. So we would have a five minute conversation. They would run out of things to say, pull out a cigarette, and offer it to me.
When I say everybody in Anhui smokes, I’m not lying
The first few times this happened, I said no. I thanked them but shook my head. I felt horrible. Their heads would drop. Their shoulders would slump. They would walk away looking hurt or even a bit confused. What had I done? Is this how the first foreign visitor to the town of Wuhe, Anhui since the Japanese (and we know how that turned out) would act. Would he be too proud to squat in the gray cold and join in the kind of fellowship that can only be enjoyed by two men inhaling and exhaling smoke on a cold day? Would he think only of his lungs and have not thought for his manners?
Hilarious!
The non-smoking Chinese who smokes when someone important offer them, so as not to offend, is so true.
Good luck quitting, you will need it.
Comment by Bob Young — September 21, 2005 @ 3:15 pm
I seem to remember that before you came Greg was talking about “cutting back.” That never really panned out, and that semester all of my clothes smelled like I smoked a pack a day.
Comment by John B — September 21, 2005 @ 11:53 pm
Hello,
I tracked you trying to reach Russel Moon.
Do you have his Contact Information by chance.
We are both Alumni from UF.
IF you could forward him My e-mail or let me know his that would be EXcellent.
JD
P.S. You could Also Let him know Kurt Bongi……is looking for him too.
Comment by Jack — September 22, 2005 @ 5:54 am
Absolutely brilliant!
Comment by Tim H — September 22, 2005 @ 6:14 am
Tim H. and Bob,
Thanks.
John B.,
Sorry, you should have been inhaling through a filter as well, I guess. I think that is the think I hate the most about being a smoker–the smell of old smoke on every freaking thing.
Comment by admin — September 22, 2005 @ 11:31 am
I’ve been slowly starting to smoke in China, it’s up to about a pack a month now and hopefully I can keep it at that level. At least I still get a sweet nicotine buzz!
Comment by alf — September 23, 2005 @ 5:22 am
Wow, Alf. Say it aint so. But that nicotine buzz is nice. I smoke too much now to get it. Which is another good reason for cutting back. I remember when I first started smoking in Anhui, some of those old dudes would give me some cigs and kinda smile…Liang Bings dad always tried to joke with me and say they were “special” cigs. Then Liang Bing would be like no, no, he’s joking. Ah nicotine.
Comment by admin — September 23, 2005 @ 10:59 am
Hey Jamie,
You want a little cheese with your whine? How about a fuckin’ diaper you sympathy-milking bitch. For the record, you came to ZUCC with cigarettes on your person. It’s not like Chris and I held you don’t and force fed you Chunghwas. You had them on you. I distinctly remember it because the first thing I thought when I met you was, “Wow, this guy looks like Annie Lennox and Gary Coleman had a baby, slapped a goatee on it and then drenched it in piss. Oh, and he smokes. Cool” Sorry for being so perturbed but you make me out to be some mentally handicapped drug pusher. Smoking is a gateway to idiocy. What the fuck does that mean? And how do I prove it? Everybody knows smoking isn’t a smart thing to do from a health standpoint. But it doesn’t dumb the brain, in fact, it sharpens it. You might have ignored that point because mental stimulation for you involves swilling down a mason jar full o’ moonshine and air guitaring all the hits of the Steve Miller Band in some sort of hick, mountain, mating dance. Trying to swoon some high class girl you met through beer goggles at a chicken wing shack. I’m not particularly happy about my cigarette addiction either but you don’t see me slandering the ones I love as a way to assuage my own feelings towards my affliction. You’ve got some nerve. Gateway to idiocy. It’s a gateway to an ass whomping! And its coming.
Love you and Miss you and see you in Atlanta,
Greg
P.S. We do need to seriously quit. It’s high time we took care of ourselves.
Comment by Greg — September 23, 2005 @ 1:15 pm
Greg,
Sorry if I offended you, I had some pictures of you, and you were being funny in them, so I went with the sensational story. You didn’t push cigarettes on me. That was unfair. You did stick a few smokes in my mouth when I was sleeping and light them. You did heat Nicorette gum until it returned to liquid form and sneak it in my morning green tea. You did finish every sentence with “and do you want a smoke?” I think that could be the strangest verbal tick ever. And, I did come back from a weekend in Shanghai to find out that you had knitted me a new quilt…with Nicotine Patches. And buying me all those Marlboro shirts at the night market, well that was a bit weird. But no…you didn’t push smokes on me. You are right. I had them on my person. You should know. You were out when I arrived, and you patted me down in a frenzy, then went through my luggage like I was Cat Stevens at the airport.
As for your quaint Maddox-worshipping characterizations of me, maybe I am a cross between Gary Coleman and Annie Lennox, but at least I got Annie Lennox’s height.
And moonshine does flow freely in the mountains, hills, and hidden valleys of Western North Carolina. But I don’t own a Phillips 66 jacket like the one you’re sporting in that last picture. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of you in your other three jackets where you show the same kind of strange exuberance for Tide, Pennzoil, and Skoal Bandit Racing. You act like Tallahassee isn’t redneck. It is redneck isn’t it? John or John B. could back me up on that. At least in North Carolina, we are honest about who we are—and yes we would still be electing Jessie Helms.
But you know…I got nothing but love for ya—nothing but love. I know you didn’t really mean anything that you wrote in my comment box—it was the nicotine/guilt typing. You got back to America, and cigarettes cost four times as much. I understand what you must be going through
See you soon in the Dirty, Dirty—the A to the T to the L. Yuuuuah Yeah. If you whomp on me, I probably deserve it. But my website has now officially been christened on the bow with the sweet champagne that is a Greg Kummery-Comment-Box-Rant. And I thank you.
Doom
PS. I’ll quit puffing if you quit being an idiot
Comment by admin — September 23, 2005 @ 3:23 pm
Doom, your story was amazing. But the highlight for me was the exchange between you and Greg. Hi larious. I’ve been trying to pinpoint the Annie Lennox in you for the past decade. Thanks, Greg. Once you said the words, “..this guy looks like Annie Lennox and Gary Coleman had a baby, slapped a goatee on it and then drenched it in piss,” I not only roared in laughter and drenched myself in piss, but was able to finally scratch that annoying brain itch, of who Doom looks like, that has haunted me since I first met the guy.
Comment by The Rhoades — September 24, 2005 @ 12:02 pm
Hey Jamie,
Good to see you posting again! How’s everything going in your life? hainan’s still the old island it used to be… a typhoon came in this weekend, not very strong, but a couple of trees down.
Anyways, talk to you later.
–Stephen
Comment by Stephen — September 25, 2005 @ 6:36 am
[...] When I was visiting Greg, we often found ourselves away from the festivities, out on the back porch, talking about China. Greg also spent a lot of the time calling me a coward because I blamed him for my smoking addiction. Let me say publicly here, Greg didn’t make me smoke cigarettes. Now we can move on. But, for now, he and I are addicted to a far more life threatening thing: China. This is what we talk about. This is who we are. As time goes by, and maybe we don’t make it back to China, will this wane? Certainly, but for now, until we become marine biologists, this is who we are. I don’t want to be a China geek. I like talking about it, but I don’t want to define my existence by a country I lived in for less than a year and a half. But has being a quasi-China geek rendered me useless in having normal conversations and with people who have never had tape worms, or hot pots? I really hope not. And apart from my lack of much female interaction these days, nothing indicates I am no longer the social una grande persona that I have always been. [...]
Pingback by jamie doom » To Everyone I’ve Ever Known: I’m a Liar, and We Won’t Stay in Touch (unless maybe I met you in China) — November 17, 2005 @ 4:03 pm
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China and Smoking
Trackback by Andrea Bosch Von Vararlberg — December 15, 2005 @ 5:48 am
What a great and random story. I found this site while looking up some cigarettes I bought in China Town in San Francisco. Chunghwas are okay, but not amazing or anything. Sure I paid something like $4 a pack, but that’s about average in California. Anyway, just thought I’d thank you for your great story, even if it is a few months late, lol.
Comment by Jason — April 7, 2006 @ 5:24 am
First off this is a well-written and informative article. However there is one part I would like to comment on.
“Come on, how are you going to admit something is disgusting and could ultimately cause your demise, yet still continue to do it?”
Comment by Brian — October 1, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
I’ve been successfully quit smoking, because my friend is died at heart disease. I’ve learned many information about it. And i just quit smoking. It’s difficult, but it’s need. THank you and RESPECT for this article!!!!
Comment by Smoking pretty — January 25, 2008 @ 3:07 pm