The Smoking Dragon — Neal Hendrix

You encounter a shocking amount of people smoking on the streets of China. The amount of smokers isn’t what always catches your eye, but it is their unique technique of smoking cigarettes. Drooping cigarettes hanging from their mouth, barely ever seen to take a drag, long ash teetering precariously. The cigarette seems like an extension of their body, like a watch or a hat. It is just there. Sometimes serving no purpose whatsover. You often see an unlit cigarette in their mouth, a temporary placeholder until a light can be found.

In modern day China, the overbearing government has declared it is unsafe and illegal for anyone to access YouTube, Facebook, any pornography, the New York Times website, Google maps, and Gmail, but the country’s 300 million plus smokers have access to the 2.3 trillion cigarettes produced by the government owned tobacco company annually. The taxes paid on those cigarettes add up to over $11 Billion US dollars in the Chinese government coffers, proving that in China it is money over everything.