China

Tobacco for smoking was introduced by European traders during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, probably on Spanish or Portuguese vessels from Manila and through the ports in Fujian. It was referred to as danbagu or danrouguo, transliterations of tobacco, although the substance also became commonly known as yancao ("grass for smoking"), jinsiyan ("golden silk smoke"), or jinsicao ("golden silk grass"). While rulers of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) repeatedly tried to ban smoking in the seventeenth century, the tobacco plant rapidly became a popular crop, particularly in the tropical south.

Yao Lü (d. 1622) was an early observer of the smoking habit: "You light one end and put the other in your mouth. The smoke goes down the throat through the pipe. It can make one tipsy, but it also protect against malaria." Tan Qian (1593–1657), a historian of the late Ming dynasty, reported that tobacco was grown extensively in Guizhou province by 1622. Along the coast tobacco conquered the local population in the first decades of the seventeenth century, as "even boys of three feet tall" acquired the habit of smoking. By 1658, as the scholar Shen Chiran observed, tobacco had become so popular that men, women, and children held pipes in their hands and carried pouches of tobacco around their waists.

A passage in the Siku quanshu, dated 1701, noted that many smoked tobacco, regardless of social class, while farmers planted the crop everywhere and made enormous profits. The rage for tobacco smoking was noted by Lord Macartney in 1793. The British ambassador observed that almost all the locals he encountered smoked tobacco, while snuff was also taken in small quantities. While scholars know little about the changing patterns of tobacco cultivation in late imperial China, by the nineteenth century it was widespread in most regions. In Yunnan province, fo0r example, every farmer reportedly reserved a corner of his field for its cultivation. The leaves would be dried for several weeks, with equal exposure to shade and sun. Leaves were rich in alkaloids, explaining the high nicotine content of local tobacco, surpassing the strongest European products.

Medical Use of Tobacco

Scholars praised the alleged medical benefits of tobacco, despite early imperial edicts against its use. Zhang Jiebin (1563–1640), one of the first medical writers to comment on tobacco, concluded that soldiers who smoked in Yunnan were protected from malaria, while its juice was a potent antidote against lice on the scalp; its fine quality earned it the name "golden silk smoke" (jinsiyan). He recommended occasional smoking, but cautioned that excessive use could cause the smoker to faint. Fang Yizhi (d. 1667), another medical authority, prescribed it against rheumatism and the common cold, but warned that too much smoke could lead to "dried-up lungs" and premature death.

Qing author Wang Ang (b. 1615) remarked that smoke "circulates throughout the whole body," invigorating the smoker and suppressing hunger. Boiling the tobacco and applying the hot paste to the affected body parts could enhance its medical properties. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the celebrated medical writer Quan Zuwang (1705–1755) even lauded tobacco as a medical panacea in his Danbagu fu (An essay on tobacco), noting that neither alcohol nor tea could be compared to tobacco, which could cheer the spirit when depressed and guide the qi ("vapors," or "energy") up spiritual passages. A "plant of immortality" and a "necessity for daily life," Quan believed tobacco was as an effective gastric remedy and a reliable hunger suppressant.

The perceived medical benefits of tobacco and the rapid inculturation of smoking as a new mode of delivery probably thrived on the positive meanings traditionally associated with smoke. Incense sacrifice originated in Buddhist India and was incorporated into the ancestral rites during the Song, aided by Buddhist scholars such as Channing (919–1001). Healers used the fumes of burning herbal drugs to exorcise demons and release evil qi. Moxibustion, in which a herbal substance was burnt on the skin as a counterirritant, drew on the healing powers attributed to smoke. As a consequence of these positive connotations, tobacco was widely cultivated in China, although little research so far has attempted to evaluate its social and economic importance.

Pipes and Snuff

Ordinary pipes were small in comparison to contemporary European pipes, often consisting of a simple brass bowl and a brass or stone mouthpiece, connected by a reed or bamboo stem. On the other hand, the pipes used by the wealthy could be expensive objects of conspicuous display, made of gold, silver, copper, or cast iron, often embellished with black wood or ivory at both ends. Water pipes were also used in many parts of the country, having probably appeared in China via South East Asia and Inner Asia a few centuries before. By the Qianlong period (1736–1796), according to one observer, water pipes were made in Gansu province. As Shu Wei (1765–1816), a noted poet and keen smoker, remarked, water pipes were offered to entertain guests, while large sums of money were spent on pipes made of bronze. Clean water was poured into the pipe, which was held with one hand, the bubbling sound also being enjoyed by smokers, some of whom would rather miss a meal than give up a smoke. The gradual spread of the water pipe led to the introduction of a new smoking terminology, as by the 1820s the term hanyan ("dry smoking") came to be used in contrast to water pipe smoking, known as shuiyan ("water smoking").

Tobacco was also taken as snuff in China from the end of the sixteenth century onward, although its use initially remained confined to imperial elites in the north of the country. During the late seventeenth century, an imperial factory began to produce snuff, which often contained expensive additives such as musk. Tobacco connoisseurs prized finely crafted snuff bottles, as they did expensive opium pipes, which would appear on the market in the following two centuries. Snuff was also used as a means of self-medication, for instance in order to alleviate the symptoms of colds and for clearing the nostrils. Wang Shizhen (1641–1711) thus noted that that snuff (biyan) was used to focus one's vision and to cure a variety of illnesses. By the early eighteenth century, snuff had crossed the social divides and appealed to a wider public, as Shen Yu expressed his alarm at the fact that even "peddlers and shepherds" regularly resorted to the substance.

The Ascendance of the Cigarette

Cigarettes were imported into China for the first time in the 1890s. Traveling on foot just before the downfall of the Qing dynasty, Edwin Dingle witnessed how the foreign cigarette was sold at wayside stalls by vendors of monkey nuts and marrow seeds. According to his observations, no trade prospered so much in Yunnan as that in foreign cigarettes, as garish posters advertising them appeared on the walls of temples, private houses, and official residences. With the spread of the anti-opium movement, all social classes and demographics—high and low, rich and poor, women and children—smoked cigarettes. It was offered at small celebrations, while a packet of cigarettes instead of a whiff of opium was offered when people called upon high officials in Kunming.

The cigarette became a ubiquitous feature in the 1910s, even in the remote interior, as hand-painted advertisements adorned pagodas, street corners, and city walls. Although the number of people who substituted cigarettes for opium is impossible to calculate, one observer was struck in 1915 by the "astonishingly rapid" spread of cigarette smoking among men and women "of all classes and ages, from ten years up." Tobacco use thus spread with opium prohibition. As much as the nineteenth century was dominated by opium, the cigarette defined the twentieth century in China. Within several decades the ready-made cigarette superseded not only opiates but also other forms of tobacco smoking, including the water pipe and hand-rolled native produce. Cigarettes were light and palatable, easy to store and handy to use, capable of delivering nicotine straight to the lungs as the smoke could be inhaled deeply in a short span of time perfectly attuned to the faster pace of industrial life. The vast majority of workers surveyed by the Shanghai Bureau of Social Affairs in the 1930s, for example, smoked cigarettes, and only 3 percent resorted to native tobacco.

The number of cigarettes legally imported into China multiplied nearly tenfold between 1915 and 1924 to some 7 billion. In 1915 the Life Extension Institute in New York, a supporter of medical missions, claimed that the Anglo-American Tobacco Company was distributing tens of millions of cigarettes free for the avowed purpose of planting the habit in the wake of the opium habit. British American Tobacco's greatest success was indeed in China, where an integrated system of mass distribution and production was created between 1905 and 1922, including modern factories and camel trains fanning out across the hinterland. Native slogans and bright placards appeared in advertising campaigns throughout the country; a huge clock sign touting Ruby Queen Cigarettes was built in Shanghai with 10-foot-square neon characters. The company prided itself on combining business with humanity by weaning local people from opium and teaching them to smoke North Carolina cigarettes. Delivered in tin-lined wooden cases, cigarette imports grew to almost half a billion a month in a number of provinces in the north by the 1930s.

The American government was a shrill opponent of opium and other psychoactive substances, although it had few reservations about the growing cigarette industry from which it stood to gain fiscally. The cigarette, unlike opium, had few enemies in China. If opium was decried as poison, cigarettes were promoted as a healthy and modern consumable. Even renowned medical publications denied any health hazards, and opposition to cigarette smoking stemmed mainly from a minority of foreign temperance activists.

One exception was Herbert Lamson's Social Pathology in China, published in Shanghai in 1935. This work referred to opium in one sentence but condemned nicotine as the real poison, since it tended to raise blood pressure, decrease powers of prolonged exertion, and increase the habit of spitting. Consumers, on the other hand, thought that foreign cigarettes were elegant to smoke, convenient to carry, and fashionable to display. They also enjoyed their refreshing taste. With the huge population movements in the republican period, cigarettes were marketed as "the best companions of modern travelers." The ready-made cigarette, in a context of increased geographical and social mobility, made the habits of sociability fostered by opium smoking even more popular: As a sign of conviviality, friendship and gratitude, it was shared in a ritual of exchange that transcended the practical as well as the social constraints of opium smoking. As opium pipes were increasingly depicted as vehicles of diseases in an age marked by new regimes of moral and medical hygiene, accused of spreading syphilis, tuberculosis, or pyorrhea, the cigarette was seen as "hygienic" (weisheng).

The match further facilitated the spread of the cigarette. Before its advent, fire was obtained by striking a steel blade on flint. The first match appeared in China in 1865, between 2,000 and 3,000 boxes being imported in the following years to reach 100,000 boxes in 1891 as the country rapidly became the world's biggest market for matches. By 1928 almost 200 different brands were competing for consumer attention. Lighters also spread in the republican period, some producers even including one with each pack of cigarettes as a marketing tactic. The cigarette, the match, and the lighter thus emerged as the new technologies of smoking culture and the symbols of a desirable modernity.

With the advent of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, the cigarette became the official intoxicant, as committee meetings of party delegates were held amid clouds of smoke, the floor covered in cigarette butts. Smoking came to symbolize the relentless sequence of struggle sessions, deliberations, and resolutions, while in the war films of the early 1950s decisive action by political leaders was often expressed by the energetic throwing of burning cigarettes on the ground. Tobacco cultivation and cigarette production were thus vigorously promoted by the CCP, as the cigarette was allowed to take over the everyday rituals and social roles of opium within a thriving smoking culture which appeared impervious to the deleterious effects of nicotine. Cigarettes evoked power and prestige and were promoted by the Communist Party's top leadership: Deng Xiaoping expressed his gratitude to the cigarette as the reason for his political longevity.

By the end of the twentieth century China had emerged as the largest market for cigarettes and the world's leading tobacco producer. China, for example, produced more than 2 billion kilograms of leaf tobacco in 2000, representing more than one-third of the world's production. However, the country is also a substantial market for foreign leaf tobacco, as more than 320 million people are smokers, about onequarter of all smokers around the world. The China National Tobacco Corporation, a government-owned monopoly, has an annual production of 1.7 trillion per year, while those who can afford it prefer to smoke imported cigarettes.

Contrary to the late imperial period, gender lines are very marked when it comes to tobacco consumption. The vast majority of smokers are male adults; only 4 to 7 percent are women. The tobacco industry contributes about 10 percent of the country's revenue, and has been the country's top revenue generator since the 1990s. There are few signs that smoking is on the decline.

See Also Japan; Origin and Diffusion; Philippines.

? FRANK DIKÖTTER

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cochran, Sherman. Big Business in China: Sino-Foreign Rivalry in the Cigarette Industry, 1890–1930. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980.

Dikötter, Frank, Lars Laamann, and Xun Zhou. Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004.

Goodrich, L. Carrington. "Early Prohibitions of Tobacco in China and Manchuria." Journal of the American Oriental Society 58 (1938): 638–657.

snuff a form of powdered tobacco, usually flavored, either sniffed into the nose or "dipped," packed between cheek and gum. Snuff was popular in the eighteenth century but had faded to obscurity by the twentieth century.

alkaloid an organic compound made of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sometimes oxygen. Alkaloids have potent effects on the human body. The primary alkaloid in tobacco is nicotine.

water pipe also called a hookah, a tobacco pipe in which the smoke is filtered through a bowl of water. The smoker inhales through a mouthpiece connected to the pipe by a flexible tube. Water pipes are traditional in the Orient.

opium an addictive narcotic drug produced from poppies. Derivatives include heroin, morphine, and codeine.

ubiquitous being everywhere; commonplace; widespread.

psychoactive having an effect on the mind of the user.