On last Chinese New Year’s Eve in Shanghai, while waiting in a pub for the annual spectacle of zillions of firecrackers and fireworks going off at the same time, I felt like having a cigar. I inquired of a waiter if the pub sold cigars. He said someone outside on the street would. I stepped out. Sure enough, a middle-aged migrant type had a huge stash of cigars hanging on the side of a bicycle, all cuban. The Partagas 4 went for Rmb 50 each, about half the price in Hong Kong. The excitement over a very good price didn’t last. The reality soon dawned on me that someone on the sidewalk selling Cuban cigars was probably not kosher. The cigar certainly didn’t taste cuban.
Last month I passed through a huge cigar shop in an upscale mall in Beijing. I went inside and saw cuban cigars piled up to the roof on all sides. The humidifiers were majestically blowing out white mist against dark colored wooden shelves. Every kind of cuban cigar was there and in quantity. It looked really impressive. Then one odd thing struck me: all the cigars looked exactly the same color and had no scent, just like the cigar I bought on the sidewalk in Shanghai.
A few days later I tried to buy a cigar at a five star hotel where I had done so many times before. It had shifted cigar selling into a boutique store in the lobby. At first I didn’t want to believe that it sold the same scentless fake cubans and checked again and again. The hotel has a good reputation. But it was selling the same thing as I bought on the sidewalk in Shanghai. The shop was outsourced. Some clever fellow had got in.