I just woke up and went to put on the jeans I wore from last night to go get something to eat. Problem is, it smells like I've developed a strong desire to smoke in one night. On top of that, I didn't even have a single cigarette last night! Stepping into the clubs of Shanghai makes me feel like I'm in America before the war on smoking began. Everybody smokes and everybody smokes a lot. In a large sized city, and I'm going to take a very rough guess here, you'd probably expect to find maybe two or three smoke shops, in Shanghai they're almost as popular as convenience stores. It's also not just one or two cigarettes a day, they're all chains smokers. The other night while playing cards with some people, I observed three people fill up an entire ash tray in the course of three hours. Luckily, for the most part, resutaurants aren't too bad, and smoking isn't allowed on the subways or in the office at work so usually I'm not having my space stolen by smoke.
Lesson Learned: If you want to quit smoking Shanghai is probably not your best bet.
