The Joys of Smoking

Smokin, drinkin and eatin in the country.

Until I came to China I hated cigarettes. They were addictive, they gave you cancer, made your lungs all black and icky too. At least so I was told by the countless ad’s on TV, radio and billboards. Alcohol, on the other hand, was breathlessly promoted and weed was silently accepted. But oh! to be a smoker! you might as well be a rat or cockroach, poisoning the air and what not… But after arriving in Beijing my perception changed.

Not only were those annoying ad’s gone, cigarettes were everywhere, not to mention dirt cheap. I quickly found that they were a perfect remedy to help deal with the stresses of living in a land whose language you are clueless of. I still remember the first time I smoked a cigarette from a pack that I bought myself. It was a chilly fall night and I was antsy and frustrated from having spent the previous four hours cramming Chinese characters into my head, a truly Sisyphean task. I took my pack of 14mg Zhongnanhai out of my top drawer and walked into the crisp air. The campus radio station was playing Chinese pop over the loud speakers. Music from the latest boy band echoed across the dark sky and mixed with the light howl of the approaching winter wind. I pulled my sweatshirt hood down over my head to protect my ears from the wind, and pulled out a cigarette. I put it in my mouth, lit it and took a drag. The thick mellow taste of cheap tobacco and tar filled my mouth and lungs, a feeling of clearheadedness also came to help push out some of the memories of today’s vocabulary assignment. Instead of stressing about the impossibility of the class’ homework I began to focus  on the late October night, the yellow glow of leaves under the streetlamps and the shadows of figures coming and going on the dark campus road.

That feeling of reflection has as much to do with the chemicals you’re inhaling as with the very process of smoking. Standing relatively still, breathing deeply, clearing your head to focus on the smoke, the sky, is fairly similar to meditation, just more harmful to the health.

In the small village that I lived in for half a year just about every man smoked. The massive trend of addiction helped make it a part of a culture of politeness that meant when you were a guest at someone’s home, a participant at a feast to mark a wedding or funeral, or you happened to meet a friend on the street cigarettes would be offered to you in the same way as a glass of tea or a plate of fruit may be. To refuse was taken a bit awkwardly, so to not seem impolite you would feign pleasure and gladly take the cancer stick. The secret was then to quickly tuck it behind your ear and stuff your face with the nearest plate of food or take a nice long sip of the drink that was in front of you. Doing this multiple times could save you the experience of waking up the next day feeling like your lungs are two sizes too small. More often than not though I smoked with the farmers, drank with them every now and then too. I could barely understand their dialect so the alcohol or nicotine acted as a convenient starting point.

When I first arrived at the village I brought a pack of unfiltered Camel Turkish blends that I had taken from America with me. They were damn good cigarettes, strong enough to make me slightly dizzy at first  but with a rich taste that you could actually enjoy. Smoking them with the cook and a couple teachers after the school day was the first time I saw them completely relaxed, half-reclining on their beds with sounds of opera blaring in the background. I struggled to catch bits of their conversation and they were patient enough with me to let me slowly reply. Those few minutes of talk about their day, their life and land was the first connection I felt to the often bewildering area that I was living in. I say tobacco made it possible.