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LEE: How to get a non-smoking room in China  

The concept of non-smoking areas is foreign to most businesses here. You can ask for a non-smoking section in a restaurant, and you get the table next to the puffer with the stinkiest cigarettes in the world (worse even than the legendary Russian tar-babies.) The other day I watched a cook in a Schlotsky's Deli light up a cigarette as he was preparing a ham on rye. Stand in a crowd of people, and the smokers will exhale in your face as they talk. . . .

I had been in my room - which stank of stale smoke - less than a minute when there was a knock on the door. I opened it to young porter who rushed in and grabbed the two ashtrays in the bathroom and on the desk. He then left.

Voila! I now had a non-smoking room.

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