Are Beijing-brand cigarettes fakes, just old, or reincarnated?

Tourists in China have complained that the souvenir Beijing brand cigarettes they have been buying in the Dashilan area’s tourist shops are fakes, according to a Global Times story.

Whether or not they are fakes is a moot point given that while the brand used to be made by the Beijing Cigarette Factory (BCF), production was stopped in 2009.

Certainly it seems that they are not quite what they claim to be because packs list BCF as the manufacturer and, as one unnamed BCF employee pointed out, it was unlikely that 3- or 4-year-old cigarettes would still be available.

Whatever the situation is, packs of Beijing cigarettes are openly on sale in many stores in Dashilan, Xicheng district, for Yuan10-23 per pack.

An unnamed employee from the Xicheng District Tobacco Monopoly Administration said they had received several complaints from tourists who had called their hotline.

“The Dashilan area is difficult to manage, because of its mobile population,” she was quoted as saying. “We’ll investigate, and the store owners will be prosecuted and fined if the case is confirmed.

“Based on previous cases, the source of the cigarettes might be from outside the city.”