Since the number of lung cancer statistics is increasing day by day, the middle-aged to elderly who are concerned about their health have already begun to kick the habit. On the other end of the spectrum, there are an increasing number of young people who are beginning to light up. These young people are oblivious to such warnings on American cigarettes which read, "Smoking may cause cancer." They may see the enjoyment before their eyes yet not realize the number of people who have died of cancer due to smoking. I've heard that even in primary and middle schools there have been an increasing number of young students taking up smoking. Such a thought cannot help but cause one to ponder the situation carefully, and cry out for people to kick the habit!

Recently, many articles concerning quitting smoking have appeared in numerous newspapers and periodicals. Some emphasize the risks of smoking while others take a lighter approach and tell of interesting experiences of smoking or of how to quit. Some humorously liken smoking to one's best friend, accompanying you through many lonely times and helping you get rid of your worries. Even if you "break up" you don't have to consider yourselves as enemies. Yet the objective of these articles is to encourage people to quit smoking.

I once smoked with my husband and luckily did not get hooked. There's an expression in my hometown which refers to cigarettes as shuang yen, which means refreshing cigarette. (This is a play on the word "cigarette" which is pronounced hsiang yen in Mandarin Chinese.) Those who are "refreshed" are lighthearted and happy. What's more, they're in control of things and lack even the slightest pressure. At that time we lived in the basement apartment of an office building. The place was damp and musty, so some friends advised that we occasionally light up a few cigarettes to get rid of the odor. So after we set down our chopsticks after each dinner we would all light up a cigarette, feeling that our hard day's work, or perhaps something not so pleasant, had vanished in thin air like the smoke itself.

After moving from that small place the nightly habit of lighting up after dinner quite naturally came to an end. Now the only one who is still hooked on smoking is my thirty-year-old son. Every time I see him take out that attractive lighter of his and light up a cigarette with such satisfaction, I can't help but ask him, "Do you have to smoke so much?" He replies, "I smoke less; it's just that you don't see the cigarettes I don't smoke." I angrily asked him, "How can you smoke in front of your mother like this? Don't you take my feelings into consideration?" Then he put the cigarette out, saved the remainder, and said, "Smoking one-third is more healthy, anyway." I sighed, "It's safer for you to throw away half of the cigarette. The secondhand smoke you release from the other half is for your parents." He remained silent. After trying to encourage him to smoke less we always left each other feeling unhappy.

Later he married. His wife is also a nonsmoker. I expected her encouragement to get him to stop smoking would be more effective than what I had been attempting to do for the longest time. Whenever I went to their house and saw those long cigarette butts in the ashtray I became angry. My daughter-in-law chuckled and said, "Ma, it's useless to urge him to stop. Doing so only makes both of us unhappy. We work different hours. When he's all alone in the house he occasionally lights up, and he doesn't smoke while he's at work. Actually, he smokes less now than ever before!" Seeing the way that she sides with him, I looked the other way.

Later, I clipped every article concerning quitting smoking that I could find in newspapers and periodicals and mailed them to him. Every time I did so I would enclose a pack of chewing gum, and tell him that, whenever he had the desire to smoke, he should chew a stick of gum.

Then I heard about those jellybeans President Reagan eats which can help one kick the habit. I sent some to my daughter-in-law and asked her to encourage him to try them. She laughed as I spoke. "Ma, don't put yourself through so much. Whether a worker or president of a country, wasn't it you who said that one may distinguish oneself in any trade?" What more could I say?

Ch'i Chun, a native of Chekiang province, was born in 1917. She is a graduate from the Department of Chinese at Chekiang University in Hang-chow, and has taught as a professor at Central University and Chinese Culture University. She is winner of many literary awards including the National Literature and Arts Awards and the Chungshan Cultural Foundation Award. Her prose, novels, and children's literature amount to over thirty in all, and have been translated into English, Korean, and Japanese.