Chapter 39 Cigarette Gossip

The author has been interested in tobacco and alcohol since I was a child. As long as I smell Dutch cigars with blue smoke and more musk, and English-style tobacco with mixed aromas, I will always have an indescribable feeling.But the family rules are very strict, smoking and drinking are not allowed under the age of twenty, so I became interested in collecting cigarette scraps.First of all, I found that the male and female servants, porters, watchmen, and chefs all smoked a chicken brand cigarette.On the thin light blue coated paper, a big rooster with a red crown and iron girth is printed in the middle, five cigarettes are placed in the sleeve, and five waxed paper cigarette holders are attached.It is probably because the wax mouth detracts from the fragrance, so everyone discards it.So I stacked these wax paper cigarette holders one after another and kept them, which can be set up to a height of one or two feet without falling over.

Soon there was a Daxi brand cigarette, and each pack was increased from five to ten, and the attached wax tip was changed to a bamboo tip, and the bamboo tip was surrounded in the middle, or it was cylindrical.Although it can no longer be used for playing, this kind of bamboo mouth is very good for blowing soap bubbles. Compared with blowing with bamboo pen caps, the bubbles are round and big, and can be thrown out without breaking for a long time.I kept a few big boxes, and some children came to me to ask for them, and they generously gave them away. Everyone played and blown bubbles together, thinking it was a joke.

Later, cigarette posters were pasted everywhere in the streets and alleys. Next to a kingfisher on the poster, there was a big word "烧" written on it.The answer is revealed. The tobacco leaves used to make cigarettes are roasted, which is what is called re-smoked. To put it bluntly, tobacco leaves that have not been re-smoked cannot be rolled into cigarettes.Because the poster with the word "roast" was successfully promoted, posters with big red eggs were discovered on the market.After a while, the egg broke out, and everyone knew that it was Big Baby Cigarettes that created the brand.

Ten years after the Republic of China, due to the huge profits in cigarette manufacturing, in addition to the three major cigarette companies of Anglo-American, Nanyang, and Huacheng, some small cigarette factories have sprung up like mushrooms after rain.In the 15th year of the Republic of China, the Ministry of Finance established the Cigarette Special Tax Office, with Chen Shudu as the director, formulated the special cigarette tax regulations, and restricted the establishment of factories in Shanghai, Hankou, Ningbo, Tianjin, and Qingdao.A license must be applied for planting tobacco leaves, and imported tobacco leaves and cigarette paper are also strictly regulated.Cigarette management was officially on the track when the special tax was changed to a unified tax.

In order to compete in business, at first every 500 sticks was packed in a big box, and a 14-inch landscape picture was given as a gift; but ordinary smokers would buy a pack of 20 sticks of the same color before buying after smoking, so the effect was not obvious.So the pictures were shrunk down and packed in a carton of 20 sticks. At first, they were just pictures of mountains and rivers, cultural relics, flowers, birds, insects and fish.Later, the advertising competition among various cigarette companies became increasingly fierce. First, there were a set of folk jokes and witty cartoons, and then,,,, and more and more refined.Not only do children praise each other for their collection skills, but even adults are addicted to collecting.

According to legend, in each set of pictures, one or two are particularly rare, even rare.For example, Zhuge Liang in Three Kingdoms, Song Gongming in Water Margin, Jiang Ziya in Fengshen, Tang Xuanzang in Journey to the West, it is rare to put one or two in a hundred sets.At that time, some friends who collected a complete set of pictures told me that it was really difficult to put together a complete set.But later I talked to Wang Wangxiang and Shi Yasan, who are in charge of several big cigarette companies in Yingmei, Nanyang, and Huacheng. They said that the company has its own printing factory, and the purpose of packing the pictures in boxes is to attract customers to smoke. If you win a lottery, the bonus prize has already been excluded from the profit. Anyone who wins the prize will not damage the company in the slightest.However, in order to increase the interest of smokers, retailers have occasionally tampered with it, and I dare not say that it is inevitable.But this kind of thing is just one in ten thousand.

Although these pictures were not written by famous artists, their authors are in a school of their own, and they all have their own specialties in painting figures and landscapes.I heard that the painting is by Du Mou, who specializes in painting gods in Haiyang, Shandong Province. He is a well-known painter in Jiaozhou Bay. He is fascinated by it, so the characters in his paintings are particularly vivid.He painted a set of 320 pictures, asking for 20,000 cash, and sent his son to the company as an inspector.This price is indeed staggering for more than ten years in the Republic of China. Huacheng produced a brand of cigarettes, probably called Dalianzhu, and the pictures used in the cigarette packs were very detailed.There are a number of drug addicts who have changed from other brands to smoking Dalianzhu in order to collect pictures.I have a friend who is a local rich man in Qing County, Tianjin, so that would be even better.He doesn't smoke cigarettes at all. He gives away cigarettes and only keeps pictures for himself.There is a Huabi Tobacco Company in Shanghai that has released a new brand called Meisan. Their pictures are from Zheng Mantuo, who was asked to paint the Meizhi month brand in Shanghai at that time. The order is 200 pieces, and the paintings will return to the province in Yuanchun.Zheng Mantuo had a serious illness and couldn't continue. He painted a total of seventy-five pieces.According to what my late friend Sun Jiaji told me before his death, there are less than ten people who have 75 copies in the mainland. I am afraid that he is the only one in Taiwan.He originally planned to show it to me, but unfortunately he is dying, and now this set of treasures has gone to nowhere.

Fifty sticks of canned cigarettes also have their sales tactics.There is a kind of imported jazz brand cigarettes, the cans are not filled with paper pictures, but duck egg-shaped enamel pictures, what about the ancient city of Pompeii in Athens, the Colosseum in Rome, the Pantheon, St. Peter's Basilica, the Medici Palace in Florence, the city of music in Austria Vienna, the Alps snow scene, the Louvre in Paris, Spanish bullfighting, the British Museum in the United Kingdom, the Lilliputian Kingdom in the Netherlands... Not only are the scenes gorgeous, but they are also fired with delicate lines and soft colors.Xiao Qianzhong, a Chinese painter in Beijing, felt that these pictures, although they were Western landscapes, were of great help to his painting layout and coloring.In three years, he collected more than 400 pieces of this kind of enamel pieces, covering all the scenic spots and places in the world.It is said that these treasures of his were all touched by a person named "Deyu" who specialized in buying and selling cigarettes and pictures in the East and West Temples.He has a picture of the arch of the Prado Museum in Madrid, which he bought for twelve silver dollars. The picture less than three inches long cost twelve dollars. Generally, those who play with pictures think that it was an unprecedented masterpiece at that time.

After the enamel flakes became fashionable for a while, Fluke canned cigarettes changed to a new style. Inside the jar were silk-woven national flags that were only an inch long, dragon patterns and phoenix colors, covered with brocade and twisted gold, and some people collected them for fun.There is a tin of McLogan cigarettes, which comes with satin paintings of exotic animals and animals, which has become a treasure of charcoal drawings.Later, the canned cigarettes produced by various cigarette companies in China also added a lot of color. Platinum Dragon brand cigarettes have a piece of cash in the tin.Because the amount of silver coins in the jar increased, and there was a sound when shaken, those who were experienced in this way would buy after shaking, so some disputes occurred.The company changed its method and folded the one-yuan banknotes issued by the Central South Bank into cubes and put them under the cigarette tray in the can, so that opportunists had nothing to do.Until the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, it remained unchanged, and the situation after North China was occupied by the Japanese army is unknown.

In the 19th year of the Republic of China, a company called Huaguang was established in Shanghai. They collected a lot of photos of movie actresses that were not commonly seen in the outside world, and all of them were magnified to 16 o’clock. One dozen cigarettes, one frame of photos.Xianci smoked a few cans, and felt that the quality of the smoke was soft and the fragrance was not choking, so he stopped smoking Platinum Dragon.Change to Huaguang.About one or two years later, there are dozens of photos of celebrities as a bonus, and they are all piled up on the bottom shelf of the study.One day, the man who gave up the grave to see the grave (commonly known as the young master of the grave) came to the city to discuss the repair of the Yang Mansion in the grave. He said that he also had such a photo of a big beauty, and people in the village cut their hair and made clothes.Unexpectedly, there are so many cards in the house, can you take two of them back for him.I was worried that there was nowhere to put these photos of the gifts. There were about fifty or sixty photos, and he took them all back.In the next Qingming Festival, I went to visit my ancestral tomb, and all the boys and girls in the village surrounded me and stared at me.It was only later that I learned that Young Master Grave told the neighbors in the village that the beauties in these photos are all my girlfriends, so everyone rushed to see what kind of person I am.Whether this joke is too big or not, it makes me laugh and cry.

Generally, smokers who know how to smoke, in addition to paying attention to whether the smell of cigarettes is mellow and smooth, they also pay special attention to the steel stamps on the cigarette sticks.At that time, Peking University professors Qian Daosun and Ye Qisun were both very interested in the research and interest in steel seals on cigarette sticks. Whenever they saw a new cigarette brand in the world, they would definitely buy a pack, pull out a cigarette, peel off the shredded tobacco, and remove the steel seal. Paper is kept in a scrapbook.Mr. Qian's Japanese friends, knowing that he likes cigarettes, collected more than 500 kinds of cigarettes for him in Japan.Mr. Ye has more than 300 steel seals on cigarettes from Britain, France, Italy and Germany.The British pay attention to the emotional appeal of smoking, and like to look at the steel stamp while smoking, so the British cigarette steel stamp is elegant in design, with complex lines and fine lines, which is much more refined than the rough American steel stamp.The author was in charge of reviewing the cigarette tax policy at the Cigarette Special Tax Office. When various tobacco companies released new cigarettes or imported cigarettes, they had to be reviewed by me. In addition to keeping a stamp for reference, I also kept two copies for distribution. Qian and Ye are two, so the two of them have the most complete collection of steel seals. At the beginning of Taiwan's recovery, there were only two tobacco factories in Taipei, Taipei and Songshan, which rolled banana brand cigarettes at the same time.The stencils on the cigarettes produced by the two factories are in the style of Xiaosan Fort, with BANANA on the top and the name of the manufacturer on the bottom. Although the formula of the cigarettes is the same, in terms of technology, different people have different opinions.Due to the different techniques, the aroma of the cigarettes is slightly different. Generally, old guns have a choice when buying cigarettes.The monopoly bureau first did not print the factory name on the packaging, so that buyers could not tell which factory produced it. Later, someone suggested that it would be better to cancel the factory name on the steel seal of the cigarette sticks, so that everyone would not have to pick and choose.Fortunately, there are a few people who are quite knowledgeable about the general situation and think that it is impossible. The reason is that if the name of the factory is canceled and the six letters of BANANA are printed horizontally in the middle of the cigarette sticks, it will not only damage the appearance, but also use small lead fonts for the steel stamps of cigarettes. Unprecedented, only the Camel brand of cigarettes in the world has five letters printed in a semicircle in cursive script.After some intense debate, the banana steel seal was finally kept as it was for the time being.A few years later, Songshan Tobacco Factory released Double Happiness brand cigarettes, with the red Double Happiness characters on the steel seal and a red circle. Later, at some point, the steel seal of banana cigarettes was also changed to a circle. In the early years when illicit cigarette manufacturing was at its peak, Fengyuan in Taichung, Erliu in Chiayi, and Donggang in Pingtung all became strongholds for illicit cigarettes because they were close to tobacco-producing areas.The rolled private cigarettes not only have a golden yellow shredded tobacco, but also have a mild flavor, but the shredded tobacco is always soft because there is no shredded tobacco bone mixed in during the rolling.As for the steel seals on the cigarette sticks, no matter what the design is, it is almost unrealistically engraved. Only the steel seals imitate handwriting.Therefore, the English characters of New Paradise produced by Songshan Tobacco Factory are written and engraved; the "Golden Horse" of the Golden Horse brand cigarettes was written by Yu Youlao, a modern grass sage, and they cannot be imitated.Later, the brand names of tobacco factory products increased. I don’t know if the workers who engraved the steel seal were lazy, or the designers didn’t see it. Most of the steel seals were changed to circles, even the high-end tobacco longevity brand is no exception.Fortunately, privately rolled cigarettes have long been extinct, and cigarettes produced by public sales bureaus are an exclusive business, so there is no need to use their brains on steel stamps anymore. However, we are generally old guns, and when we think of the exquisite steel seals of Jiali Ke, Kress, Baiguan, and Xiao Wuhua in the past, we still have some inexplicable yearning!