IF you are a smoker, it's better for you not to meet Zhang Yue who is being hailed as China's first antismoking crusader.

Zhang, 44, is from Xin'an county of Luoyang in Central China's Henan Province. In November 2001, he started his country-wide anti-smoking activities and since then has visited 30 provinces and cities. On November 20, he arrived in Shanghai, according to the Shanghai Youth Daily.

It was raining hard that afternoon and Zhang, shouldering a big bag of no-smoking slogans and materials, started his work to convert the city's 4 million smokers.

His persuavive powers worked well at the intersection of Shaanxi Nanlu and Jinxian Lu. Several male smokers threw their cigarettes away after listening to Zhang's warnings.

A man surnamed Chen who has smoked for 50 years said he was willing to accept Zhang's arguments. He also asked for several no-smoking pamphlets to take home to persuade his family members not to smoke.

The argument

But as Zhang had expected, there were always some stubborn smokers. In Parkson plaza, two young male smokers put out their cigarettes reluctantly after listening to Zhang's arguments. The two men said: "If everyone quits smoking, won't that hurt the country's tax collection a lot?"

Zhang said: "The loss of tax can be made up from other businesses such as dining and entertainment. The country's loss due to smoking every year is much bigger than its income from cigarettes."

When Zhang started to list some figures to support his opinions, the two young men ran away quickly as if they couldn't endure his persuasion anymore.

In the plaza, Zhang also met a woman expatriate. When Zhang gave her some of his no-smoking literature, she threw it on the ground.

"I meet such embarrassment everywhere but what pleases me is that most people can understand me and follow my suggestions," he said. "I will keep at it because I hate smoking."

Zhang's hatred of smoking is due to his father. The father is a primary school teacher and a heavy smoker. Zhang recalls feeling choked by the smell of smoking when he was a child and being awakened by smoking smells at midnight.

"I don't like that smell. I wonder why some people love it so much," he said. To answer the question for himself, he smoked for the first time when he was 15. "The feeling was so awful!" The first trial was also the last one.

When he was 28 years old, his 26-year-old sister died of encephalopathy. Later, he read that research had found that the children of smokers were at risk of cancer.

Although Zhang never mentioned it to his father, he always had a nagging doubt: Was his sister's death related to his father's heavy smoking? From then on, he decided to try to persuade people to quit smoking.

Zhang started on his family members first. The most difficult one was his father. No matter how much he argued, his father clung to his cigarettes.

Zhang could only move his father by referring to his brothers and sisters and pointing out that the respiratory systems of the six children in the family were not good. "One smokes - three generations suffer," he said. Gradually, his father smoked less and less until, in the end, he gave up smoking.

Now no one in the family smokes.

Accosting strangers

The next step for Zhang was to try to get strangers to quit smoking.

At first, when he met a smoker on the bus or in the street, he would ask them to stop smoking. Because of his crusade, he had to put up with receiving many cold shoulders.

When he found it too tiring to persuade by talking, he collected as much information as he could about smoking and printed it out as handouts. So far, he has spent about 40,000 yuan (US$4,800) on his campaign.

Zhang said he also had three principles: do not make friend with smokers, do not buy smoker's goods, do not travel in a smoker's car.

Gradually, Zhang's friends all quit smoking because he told them that real friends do not choke people with their smoking.

He has never bought goods from smokers. "I give you money, why do you give me a bad smell in return - it's not fair!" he said.

One time, he took a bus and the driver was smoking. When the driver would not listen to Zhang's anti-smoking arguments, Zhang got off the bus and waited for the next one.

Years of efforts

To gain a fuller understanding of the smoking situation around the country, Zhang began his round-country travels in November 2001.

The start was not smooth at all. He not only found that almost every locality was full of smokers in the streets but also that he was running out of money to continue on the road.

Zhang bought a 3-yuan lunch box and divided it into three parts for breakfast, lunch and dinner. One winter, when he had only 2 yuan left in Wenzhou in neighbouring Zhejiang Province he had to sleep in the railway station.

Zhang's finances were also running low because he was using his own money to "buy" cigarettes from smokers.

One day when Zhang was on a bus, a young man beside him smoked and would not listen to his words of warning about smoking. Zhang then asked him the price of the cigarettes and when the young man said they had cost 13 yuan, Zhang seized them, broke them up and gave the young man 13 yuan. All the passengers were shocked. "I just want to prove I am strictly against smoking," he told all the passengers.

From then on, whenever he took a bus, he always prepared a stack of 1-yuan coins. If he enountered a smoker, he would ask the person to put out the cigarette and pay one yuan in return.

"The statistics show that the number of smokers is rising and also that more young people are starting to smoke," Zhang said. "My plan is to set up a 'No Smoking' association in China. It is my life-long business."

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