Results tagged “smoking”

Yao Ming, already do-gooder around town and anti-sharks fin activist, is now tackling another problem: smoking. The basketball superstar will now be acting as spokesperson for a new nationwide anti-smoking drive. He'll be delivering public service announcements to discourage people from lighting up and he'll be preaching the no smoke gospel with folk music singer Peng Liyuan, wife of China vice-president Xi Jinping and recent star of the 60th Anniversary gala.

Who would've thought that the most populous city of a nation that contains one-third of the world’s smokers would have people proposing public area smoking bans so sweeping it even makes us gag? Yet another advocate has come out of the woodwork to join the growing call for a comprehensive smoking ban in Shanghai’s restaurants, pubs... and even individual rooms in karaoke bars.

You know our opinion on the smoking bans that the Shanghai government is thinking about putting into place (and if you don't, it's basically this: Ban it! We love going home not reeking of ciggs and no, we don't particularly care that forcing smokers to suck on their deathsticks outdoors inconveniences them), but you now get to state your own, and not just in our comments section! Shanghai lawmakers will be holding a hearing on September 21 to mull over the opinions of residents before they place the final touches on the legislation. Only twenty city residents will be allowed to attend the hearing, but expats are welcome to apply for a seat. Applications will be accepted til next Tuesday - either call 6358-6499 or log onto either www.spcsc.sh.cn or www.eastday.com and give them a piece of your mind. Source: Shanghai Daily

Giving its admittedly lame smoking law some more teeth, city legislators have served up a new draft legislation called the "Shanghai public tobacco control law" that would actually begin fining individuals for taking drags in prohibited locations.

Those of you smokers hoping to quit healthily using those newfangled electronic cigarettes coming out of China as a crutch... Sorry - turns out that they're just as bad as the real thing, just in a different way.

Old habits die hard, but when Shanghai says "No" to smoking, it ain't playin'. Organizers of the Shanghai World Expo 2010 have returned a $29.3 million sponsorship from Shanghai Tobacco after they felt it clashed with the Expo's "living healthier" image.

• What do you notice in this view of Kunming? [James Fallows] "Every roof as far as you can see has solar-thermal panels for hot water heating. More to come shortly on China's general environmental/climate situation, but I think this vista is different from that in many US cities — among other details you might notice, in the prevalence of the panels."
• Smoking kills - but few aware [People's Daily Online] "One-third of doctors in the country do not know smoking causes coronary heart disease, and nearly four in five do not know passive smoking can cause sudden infant death syndrome, a report revealed yesterday. Also, three in five smokers do not know that smoking causes heart disease, and four in five do not know it could lead to a stroke, the national tobacco control office of the Ministry of Health said in the report."
• 'Oldest pottery' found in China [BBC News] "Examples of pottery found in a cave at Yuchanyan in China's Hunan province may be the oldest known to science. By determining the fraction of a type, or isotope, of carbon in bone fragments and charcoal, the specimens were found to be 17,500 to 18,300 years old."

The anti-smoking campaigns have begun! Well... at least they've begun in Shanghai's Hongqiao Airport, which just enacted a new smoking ban in all restaurants, toilets, offices and other public spaces inside the terminals. The enforcement is pretty stringent too - any business contaminated with evidence of cigarette smoking, such as the smell of smoke or wayward butts, will be fined upwards of 1000RMB. Now the only place to take a drag will be one of the five specially ventilated smoking rooms after the security check-in. Apparently, you're still allowed to puff away at the Pudong International Airport... for now. Source: Shanghai Daily

We thought we'd have another two years before the smoking laws came into effect, but it now looks like Shanghai's ready to ban cigarettes from public places - indoor venues, public transport and work areas - by January 2010. They're even discussing a penalty this time around! Officials say the law will help make the Expo smoke-free when it starts five months after... and since it's attached to the Expo, you can bet people will be enforcing this with maybe slightly more gusto than previous attempts to wipe out the cancer sticks. Still... it IS China. What will officials use as the go to way of establishing guanxi after? Lollipops? Source: Shanghai Daily

China's Health Minister, Chen Zhu, has cautioned medical workers to quit smoking, in order to “set a good example for their patients and others who look up to them,” according to China Daily. About 320 million people are smokers right now, and growing rates of lung cancer and emphysema have become a major health concern. But without laws, taxes and other regulations in place, we can't help but think Mr. Chen won't have much luck seeing an end to smoking doctors. After all, it's not like they haven't been trying to get them to quit for years already.

Sorry, Shanghai smokers! The ban on smoking in public venues has now been extended to all indoor workplaces in an attempt to clear the city's air of cigarette smoke by 2011. By indoor workplaces, they mean "all places with ceilings and at least three walls." So basically... everywhere.

Guess some kids get started on the ciggies a lot earlier than others. A lot earlier. Source: ZhongNanHai Blog

Visitors to the Life Art Center, also known as that place on Maoming Lu with lots of bad art and Southern Barbarian, may have noticed something a little out of the ordinary lately: Shanghai's first head shop (that we know of at least).

Whilst smoking bans in restaurants and bars seem to be spreading throughout the rest of the world, Shanghai is having second thoughts.

As part of the preparations for the Shanghai World Expo, the municipal government has marked the 600 day countdown by publishing a report on "uncivilized behavior" among locals. The report is based on an online survey in which over 5,000 Shanghai citizens were polled on what kind of behavior they consider annoying or rude.

In a move to help realize Beijing's ideal of a non-smoking Olympics, Shanghai has made an effort to curb its inhabitants' unhealthy habits — smoking in cafés and restaurants associated with the Games will now be prohibited. Hotels will be required to offer non-smoking floors and rooms, as well as cafeterias. Smoking in taxis will not be permitted for either customers or drivers. According to the China News Agency's Shanghai bureau another, smoking in hospitals will now also be prohibited (you mean it wasn't before?).

Caijing Magazine shares some startling statistics on cancer in China, where smoking, poor diet, water pollution and environmental problems have caused the nation's cancer death rate to rise 80 percent in the past 30 years. The statistics come from an exhaustive survey conducted by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Science and Technology. According to the survey, cancer is now accountable for 25 percent of all urban deaths and 21 percent of all rural deaths. Although the rising cancer death rate has long been attributed to an aging population, this recent survey still found that the nation's lung cancer death rate rose 261 percent after adjusting statistics for age.

This video clip from MSNBC has one shocking statistic — China has one third of the world's smokers. That's 350 million, more than the population of the United States. This also comes as news to us: that Beijing is going to ban indoor smoking from May, ahead of the Olympics. Whether this will work remains to be seen. One restaurant chain that has enforced the smoking ban ahead of schedule is already complaining that it is losing business and that customers have deserted it in droves.

We want some of whatever this guy is smoking:

News tidbits from the public transportation world:

Netizen "fyliumin" has sent in the following vid to Youku.com with the following comment:

Today is World No Tobacco Day, and according to a joint study done by Shanghai city and Fudan University public health researchers found that 82.8% of Shanghai people in a survey said they supported the idea of smoking/non-smoking sections in restaurants, while around 70% of restaurant managers said they were hoping to either completely ban smoking or else try sections. However, in reality only 6.1% of restaurants have banned smoking, and only 24.2% of restaurants have non-smoking sections.

Zhang Yue (张跃) of Luoyang is the kind of guy that we want around, all the time. Why? Because Zhang is known for plucking cigarettes out of people's mouths right as they are about to light up. The anti-smoking crusader has taken his show on the road to the tune of over 200 cities in China, and was recently spotted on Nanjing Lu, snubbing out eleven cigarettes in the space of half an hour. Normally, you don't do things like that -- especially to hard-core smokers -- but perhaps Zhang's altruistic motives, supplemented by his anti-smoking informational pamphlets, manage to convince where other methods fail. You can read reports about Zhang's exploits in Chengdu and Foshan as well (reports in Chinese). Thursday, May 31 is World No Tobacco Day.

Imagine Superman, Monkey King, time travel, martial arts and state-of-the-art technology all rolled into one. Sorry for that mental image, but this is what Mohuan Shouji (魔幻手机 or "Magic Cellphone") promises when it hits the small screen in November. This "modern" fantasy television drama series brings up a concept that human beings can actually be transported through SMS (we have heard rumors that Shanghai officials and mobile phone service providers are actually planning on launching this functionality ... by 2010, the magical year when all of our dreams will come true).

Shanghaiist hopes that Valentine's Day 2007 went better for you than it did for us. We had planned, after dinner and drinks, to get drunk and screw, especially after watching the above sex ed video for inspiration.