By continuing you agree to eChinacities's Privacy Policy .
Sign up with Google
Sign up with Facebook
Q: Problems with giving up/taking up smoking in China?
I gave up the smokes back in my twenties, back I've found that since being in China and the fact that all dinners are like a chimney and everyone just offers you ciggs all the time, I've found myself occasionally smoking once again. Due to cigarettes being ubiquitous in China, have you found yourself taking them up or are struggling to give up?
Quite the opposite.. Never smoked in my life and my girlfriend used to smoke half a pack a day. Came here and now she doesn't smoke anymore.. Except maybe one cigarette every 6 months when I make her very angry.
When I gave up cigarettes I had to also, for a while, stay away from places with lots of smokers, such as bars. After some years I can hang around smokers, but I am still a bit hesitant in consuming too much alcohol amongst smokers unless they are friends who I can trust to slap me if I ask for a smoke.
I smoked cigarettes for 'long time', and 'long time ago'. I quit smoking, because my sleep is much better if I don't smoke. At all health warnings, cancers, and what not, I was always thinking 'you know, you have to die of something', butt....when you sleep, you crave tobacco same as in the day time, so your sleep is much nicer if you don't smoke.
If I compare difference of sleep between 'smoker's' and 'non-smoker's' sleep, I would say now I am just 'disconnected' (out) during my sleep, and when I smoked, my sleep was like I would be connected to small electrical current.
When I am close to HK or Guernsey, I smoke Cubans regularly. Last year in HK, I was on the 'budget sleep' for some HK$ 35 a night, butt...I smoked HK$ 80 a day.
I quit smoking years ago, but always being around smokers in China and often pissed off I started again. Chinese cigs are so cheap. At home cigs cost $10 a pack.
I quit smoking 4 years ago. Being in China actually makes me more repulsed to cigarette smoke, especially when it's in public places where people are banned from smoking back home, like restaurants, elevators, cafés, bars, cars with passengers etc... I stopped cold turkey by setting up a situation where I would be disgusted by cigarettes, so I guess that every time there's cigarette smoke around, it triggers the feeling that occurred at that particular time.
Good thing you aren't living in the Philippines though
Huge problem. Back in the good ole US of A, I didn't smoke for a number of reasons: peer & societal pressure, nowhere to light up anyways, and a pack of smokes cost around 5 bucks. (I also exercised more and rode my bike to work and to the gym.)
So, what happens? I come to China, all my mates smoke (expat drinking buddies, local & foreign musicians, workmates, the bossman), and what do I do after a few pints? I light up.
It doesn't help much that a pack of weeds costs 6 kuai.
Maybe if the health propaganda department started a PSA campaign warning people about the hazards of smoking, things would change a bit. Combine that with raising the price of a pack of smokes from 6 to, say, 30 or 40 kuai. After all, the gov't would still make money. They own the tobacco companies anyway, don't they?
The sad thing about smoking in this country and everywhere else in the world is that, ultimately and in the long run, society will pay out more for the cure than the prevention.
I smoked cigars since age 16. I am 45 this year.
I drastically cut down when I moved to Beijing, and quit altogether because of my girlfriend. She never asked me to quit, but I know that she did not like the smell of cigar so I simply stopped.
