Smoking and Vaping in China: Where You Can Light Up and Where You'll Get Fined

Published 2026-11-12 · 71Asia Tours

The paradox you'll notice on day one

China grows its own tobacco, sells a pack of cigarettes for less than a bottle of water, and counts roughly 300 million smokers. Men press cigarettes on strangers as a form of greeting. The state tobacco monopoly makes more profit than most countries' entire budgets.

At the same time, the country has spent ten years banning smoking almost everywhere indoors. This confuses everyone. Smokers arrive expecting a free-for-all and get fined on a train. Non-smokers brace for a smoky trip and find the air in a Shanghai restaurant cleaner than back home. Here is how it actually works.

Where smoking is banned

Since 2015 or so, most big cities have passed their own indoor smoking laws. Beijing went first, Shanghai and Shenzhen followed, and the short version is the same everywhere major: no smoking inside restaurants, bars, cafes, shops, hotels, offices, metro stations or taxis. Enforcement is where it gets interesting. In Shanghai or Shenzhen a waiter will stop you. In a small-town noodle joint two provinces over, the ashtray may already be on the table, and nobody will look up.

My personal rule is to treat every enclosed space as smoke-free until I see locals light up. If the table next to me starts smoking in a roadside restaurant, that is my signal that the rule here is decorative. In a chain restaurant or a mall, it never is.

The train rule that stops trains

This is the one that catches foreign visitors, so I'll say it plainly: do not smoke on Chinese trains. Not in the vestibules, not in the toilet, not "just one" between carriages. High-speed trains carry sensitive smoke detectors, and when one triggers, the train makes an emergency brake. Staff come running down the aisle, the fine runs from 500 to 2,000 yuan, and repeat offenders can be banned from buying tickets altogether. The detector sits in exactly the spot smokers assume is the loophole.

Older green slow trains are more forgiving, and smokers do gather at the carriage ends. But if your ticket has a G, D or C in the number, assume total prohibition from the moment you step on the platform. Airports, planes, metro, buses and ferries are all smoke-free too.

Vaping and e-cigarettes

Vaping is legal but hemmed in. Since 2022 the industry sits under the tobacco monopoly, and fruit and dessert flavours were pulled from legal domestic sale. Only tobacco-flavoured pods are sold inside China now. If your vape is mango or mint, bring your own supplies, because you will not restock them in Chengdu or anywhere else. One device and a reasonable amount of liquid for personal use is fine at customs; a suitcase of them to sell is not.

Where you can vape follows the same logic as cigarettes. Vape shops, yes. Restaurants and trains, no. And be careful in hotel rooms: heavy clouds have tripped smoke alarms, and hotel damage fees make train fines look charming.

Buying cigarettes

Packs are sold at every convenience store and supermarket kiosk, usually 10 to 30 yuan for a mainstream brand, under 5 yuan for the rough local stuff. The legal purchase age is 18, checked about as often as you would guess.

If you don't smoke and hate smoke

Mostly good news. Indoor air in big Chinese cities is far cleaner than it was a decade ago, and the metro, malls and mid-range restaurants are genuinely smoke-free. Smoke still finds you at street food stalls, in old teahouses, at outdoor seating areas, and in smaller-city restaurants where "indoor" and "outdoor" are loose concepts anyway.

Practical moves: sit near a door or outside when you can, pick newer restaurants over hole-in-the-wall places if smoke ruins a meal for you, and know that hotpot rooms are the smokiest enclosed spaces in the country, partly the broth, partly the cigarettes. Nobody minds if you ask to change tables.

City by city

Beijing: the strictest enforcement in the country. Individuals can be fined 50 to 200 yuan on the spot, and restaurant owners risk much more.
Shanghai: almost as strict and mostly followed. The odd smoking room survives in an old bar, but it is rare now.
Xi'an: the city ban is real but patchy off the main streets. The Muslim Quarter food lanes are open-air, so smoke drifts.
Chengdu: older teahouses and mahjong rooms are the last bastions of indoor smoking. The People's Park teahouse is open-air, and yes, people do light up there.
Chongqing: enforcement thins out in the old hillside neighbourhoods, and hotpot rooms can get hazy late at night.
Tibet: monasteries and temples prohibit smoking strictly, and at 3,600 metres most smokers cut back anyway. Do not light up anywhere near the Barkhor kora.
Zhangjiajie: the national forest park bans smoking outside designated points, and rangers patrol in dry season. The fire risk is real and the fines are heavy.
Hong Kong: statutory no-smoking indoors everywhere, with an HK$1,500 on-the-spot fine. You also cannot legally buy e-cigarettes there at all.
Macao: indoor smoking is banned across the city, and casino floors went smoke-free in 2019. Vapes are banned from sale too.
Taipei: smoking is only allowed in designated areas in many districts, fines run NT$2,000 to 10,000, and neither e-cigarettes nor heated tobacco can be sold.

My rules of thumb

If you smoke: indoors means no, outdoors means yes unless there's a crowd, trains mean absolutely not, and forest parks mean keep the pack closed until you spot a bin with an ashtray next to it. Airport security will confiscate your lighter; a new one costs a couple of yuan after you land.

If you vape, bring your own liquid, because local shops only carry tobacco flavours now. And if a Chinese acquaintance offers you a cigarette at dinner, accept the gesture even if you don't smoke it: take it with a smile, say thanks, set it down. Declining with a smile and a wave costs even less, and nobody will push.

Written by the team at 71Asia Tours, a China-based tour operator with licensed Spanish- and English-speaking guides. Browse all tours · About us · Our guides · Reviews · FAQ