Peter Tang, who has smoked cigars for 30 years, enjoys smoking at one of his restaurants in Beijing. [Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

Cigars have never been foreign to Chinese.

Decades ago, Chairman Mao appeared in pictures smoking cigars. But it's in recent years that such luxury items - the consumption tax imposed on cigars is about 25 percent - have attracted new fans among the rich and the rising middle class.

It's easy to find a cigar store inside the five-star hotels of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, where many showcase premium smokes from Cuba, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere. But until about 10 years ago, dealers say, most cigars sold in China were purchased by foreigners. Americans, who still cannot buy Cuban cigars at home because of the decades-old political embargo, have been particularly attracted.

Peter Tang, 55, who owns several restaurants in Beijing, recalls that when he had his first Cuban cigar in Hong Kong in 1985, it was very difficult to find cigar stores in China and few Chinese smoked cigars then.

Tang says many years ago, when he went to Kunming in Yunnan province, he was the only one who smoked cigars while his friends there favored cigarettes. One year later, when he went back, almost all of them were puffing cigars.