In China, smoking cigarettes is as common as in the US inhaling Doritos. And like the culture of gluttony in the States, the Chinese can proudly claim to be the world’s biggest smokers.

Cigarettes are major status symbols in China, no different from the cache that luxury cars or designer clothing carry in the West. Unlike in the West, however, where most brands of cigarettes are similarly priced, in China a packet of fags ranges from a few pennies to over a hundred dollars. And soft packs are priced higher than hard packs, a justification for which I have yet heard explained. Cartons of cigarettes are also gifted in exchange for favors, serving as unofficial currency.

Even when the Chinese currency was valued at 25 percent more than today, and not taking into account inflation and salary increases, cigarette prices have always had a huge range from the dirt cheap to the dizzyingly absurd. To put this in perspective, imagine stepping into a 7-Eleven where the cigarette display contained packs from 50 cents to a thousand dollars.

There’s also the starry-eyed, circa 1950’s notion that cigarettes are still somehow beneficial. Even in today’s purportedly developed Chinese society, the common thought is that cigarettes are relaxing and social. Naturally, none of the hundreds of brands sold in China contain a warning label. And at all major functions, like government banquets, wedding receptions, and ironically funerals, high-end brands of cigarettes will be piled around the table on saucers or left in their sealed boxes for guests to enjoy and smuggle into their pockets. At the entranceway to a wedding reception it is likely to be greeted with a cigarette by the bride and groom or child of the family. Everyone gets one, as if a party favor or lollipop after a visit to the doctor’s. People smoke in hospitals, classrooms, elevators, buses, nowhere is sacred.

I remember one brief hospital visit I had in the City of Changchun. I was hooked up to an intravenous drip and laid out on a gurney and left in a bare room that could have doubled for the set of the Saw movies. A well-dressed doctor eventually came to visit and as there were no chairs he propped himself on the edge of my wheeled cot and proceeded to hand me a cigarette. The two of us then shared a smoke and chatted about my medical condition while I laid on my back and watched the IV drizzle into my arm.

One justification I have heard for the prevalence of smoking is that cigarettes represent wealth. They are a throwback to a time not so long ago when smoking was equated with the status of having disposal income. So, sticking a cigarette in your face is literally a way of giving yourself face. And this antiquated “tradition” marches on through modern-day China. Cigarettes are also huge revenue streams for the government, accounting for a reported 7% of taxes and 1% of China’s GPD. These are the “official” numbers so they are probably higher. There’s no question that China’s cigarette industry keeps millions employed. However smoking related diseases also kill over 1% of the population each year, so like the one-child policy smoking also plays a less-than-bragged-about role in population control.

China even has a national cigarette, like the panda is their national animal. The brand is called “Chunghwa,” the very same famed cancer sticks that Mao choked until he expired. And successor Deng Xiaoping’s choice oral fixation was none other than a brand called “Panda.” You can’t make this shit up.

When I used to smoke cigarettes I remember buying a different brand with every purchase. There are literally hundreds of choices available and each box is designed with unique flare. Kid in a cancer store. One night at dinner I was with two well-to-do, loyal Chunghwa smokers. They noticed me toting a camouflage box of cigarettes and proceeded to mock me saying that I didn’t know anything about good cigarettes. I submitted to them that there was actually little discernible difference between most Chinese brands. Apart from there being strong cigarettes and light ones, price was the only noticeable divide. This remark drew only further derision, and with it the taste challenge was on.

I removed one of their soft-pack Chunghwas fags and then one of my own. Simultaneously lighting both, I told one of the guys to close his eyes. The mocking grew more acute and their laughter tightened. This was far too easy a game, it was just childish. And so Mr. Tang obligatorily shut his eyes while I delivered to his lips the first cigarette. It was his own. Following a pensive drag and exhale he nodded in wait for the second. And after a quick draw on my own inferior brand, he then boldly extolled that that was of course his treasured Chunghwa. I said nothing when he opened his eyes to have the embarrassing truth revealed, his friend aghast with hysteria and himself quick to take up the test.

And so we again commenced, again with eyes wide shut but now with cigarettes coyly switched in their order of delivery. I figured that even with a guess one of these two ninnies should toss the 50:50 odds. Add to their chances the strong likelihood that a devotee of one brand of cigarette should be able to perceive even the slightest difference in taste, if even in the feel of the filter. Something! I would have even bet against me. But as events would prove, the second contestant also guessed wrong.

It was a rare moment in my many years in China, a rare one indeed, when proof was served up and force-fed with absolute silence. No excuses were made. Everyone was quiet. It was really something to see. Nothing more of it was said. And I didn’t need to gloat. The cigarettes—as they usually do—got the last laugh.