Comment

Smoking the bad folks out

By Rob Hemsley (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-16 09:24

Let me paint a picture for you, a typical scene you might see on any Chinese street. There's a guy with a smoldering cigarette in his mouth. He takes a huge puff of smoke into his already ravaged lungs, then proceeds to cough, splutter and wheeze like Darth Vader with bronchitis. Then, just as the coughing subsides (or perhaps even half a second before), the slightly shorter cigarette returns to his yellow-toothed mouth and the grim cycle repeats once again.

If you've been in China longer than two minutes, you know what I'm talking about. And it's not just on the street you see this, either. These smoking simpletons can be found anywhere and everywhere - especially if there's a "No Smoking" sign in the vicinity: hospitals, restaurants, hotels, net bars, offices, apartment buildings, even toilet cubicles. Seriously, you can't enter any male public toilet in China (even at an airport) without feeling like you've stepped into a foul-smelling forest fire.

For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I dislike smoking - and I particularly dislike those who engage in it around me. None of that "hate the sin, love the sinner" baloney here. No, sir. Those coughing fools who seem intent on polluting my lungs as well as their own have a special place reserved for them in the ninth level of my own personally-designed RobHell.

Seriously, how can these tobacco junkies justify puffing away and contaminating the communal air while regular people, including tiny children with developing lungs, try to go about their daily lives? Do they lack any degree of empathy? Do they not realize that passive smoking is unpleasant and potentially fatal?

Only a few days ago, I was eating at a jolly restaurant here in Beijing with a beautiful colleague. I chose this place specifically because it sported a number of large "No Smoking" signs on its walls. But, as expected, it wasn't long before some buffoon on the table beside me lit up. With my rage barely under control, I demanded the manager explain to me why customers could disregard the rules so flagrantly. Rather than answer this question, the weedy female manager shot off and returned seconds later with a bribe to diffuse my righteous anger and shut me up. That bribe? A plate of lettuce! Do I look like a rabbit?

I have a hundred such stories, involving spluttering smokers lighting up in ridiculous (and prohibited) areas. Near my apartment, for example, there's a branch of a well-known French supermarket. In the toilets of this supermarket, uniformed workers puff away below large "No Smoking" signs. I even took a photo of this event, to chortle at the irony with my non-smoking chums.

China, for its part, has pledged to implement a smoking ban in all public venues, public transportation and workplaces by January 2011. Before non-smokers (and those who enjoy having healthy lungs) get too excited, however, let's remember that previous attempts to ban smoking in China - the world's largest producer and consumer of cigarettes - have failed miserably. A 1995 crackdown in Guangzhou led to anti-smoking laws that existed on paper only, as did a 1997 venture in Hunan. And what about the ongoing Shanghai Expo? Venues that are technically (and legally) smoke-free sport ashtrays on tables. It doesn't seem as though any smoker in China ever takes these laws seriously.

So, what are we non-smokers to do? Hide in our apartments and survive on takeaways until January 2011 comes around? If I thought anything would change, I might just do that. But smoking in China is like drinking tea in England - it's something ingrained in the culture.

Perhaps, as a compromise, I could go a little more up-market than your average smoking Joe and whip out a fine Cuban cigar next time I'm lurking around the urinals of my local supermarket. At least then I'd be breaking the rules with class.