You Can't Do That Here: Smoking Forbidden in Forbidden City

“The emperor … looked over the fires burning the city. He returned to the Palace of Surpassing Brightness and wrote a ‘Scarlet Edict.’ … Having done this, he called for wine, and when he had drunk several cups, sighed heavily.”

...and thus ended the Ming Dynasty, as described in the imperial archives.

These fires of 1644 were set by Li Zicheng’s rebel army, not errant cigarette butts thrown around by Palace employees. Nonetheless, The Forbidden City is now taking action in order to prevent another ruinous fire.

Global Times reports that “Beijing’s Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City, announced on Saturday that the museum will go smoke-free. … It says all its staff and people working in the Forbidden City are not allowed smoke, regardless of being indoor or outdoor, or open-air or in work zone.”

Although more than 50 fires have burned through the wooden structures of the Forbidden City, there was previously no rule specifically banning smoking in the Palace Museum before the May 18 ban was enacted. And if anyone does decide to ignore the official edict by smoking in the museum, the rebels “will face punishment, the regulation says.”

Imperial Archive quote: The Forbidden City: The biography of a Palace, by Frank Dorn, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970.

Photo: Tomasz Wagner

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So if it might set fire to an old building, we can ban it.

But it's still apparently perfectly fine for some idiot to come up to the non-smoking section of a restaurant, blow smoke straight into my pregnant friend's face so he can gawk at her at his convenience, and then for us to be told that he can't be told he can't smoke while sitting in the non-smoking section under the giant no-smoking sign because he's too important and the unborn child needs to be more reasonable to flexible and besides, non-smoking doesn't mean anything anyway. Just for show.

It's the way China has its priorities straight that is why I really love it.