The Great Asian Saloon Series / The Cohiba Cigar Divan
McGurn, William
The Cohiba Cigar Divan by William McGurn Hong Kong I have never thought of myself as' a cigar man. For one thing, I don't smoke. That alone might be thought rather an obstacle. And on those rare,...
...On a more or less regular basis, the members dress for a formal dinner, enjoying a cigar after each of their six courses...
...A note outside the Divan entrance explains that one of Fidel Castro's first acts was to appoint Che head of the tobacco industry, from which position the latter decided to bring together the best "rollers" to launch a new brand of cigar from the pick of the tobacco crop "as a celebration of revolutionary culture and craftsmanship...
...Almost always photographed with a beloved Dunhill Cabineta or Cohiba Robusto in hand, David virtually defines political incorrectness—if only because he still believes in the concept of a gentleman...
...David shakes his head grimly...
...We have foreign-language mystery dramas, dialogs recorded in Paris, and ethnic music from around the world...
...You must have a Cohiba...
...But even more delightful than the cigars were the regulars who filled the Mandarin's east lobby for their Big Smoke...
...Computer programs and videos also...
...Back inside by the bar, I am reminded that much of the problem emanates from Washington, and someone mentions that Bill and Hillary have banned smoking from the White House...
...Then there's Nick Barclay, an Englishmen who helps run a dinner club called the Blue Parrot...
...And on those rare, social occasions where I might indulge in a proffered stogie, I most always regret it the following morning...
...He's also a Divan regular...
...The Big Smoke had two other things going for it as well: the invitation came from David Tang, and the party would be at his Cohiba Cigar Divan...
...If we die early they get the benefit of our pensions...
...It's a William McGurn is a senior editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review...
...the factory was a mansion built in 1910 for the Marquesa de Pinar del Rio...
...The name Cohiba was taken from the old Taino Indian word for tobacco, and for the first twenty years or so it was reserved for diplomatic gifts and the like...
...and it is tobacco tax that finances much of the government that now wants to take away the only consolation left for those who are poor and do not have jobs because of government...
...I must say I'm very suspicious of a world leader who won't smoke a cigar because his wife won't let him...
...The attraction is that it brings together like-minded people from all walks of life," says Nick...
...I may know little about cigars, but I do know something about men's establishments, and the Cohiba Cigar Divan is every man's dream, which is to say that it is precisely the type of establishment so out of favor in today's America...
...And so they did, and the shop was kept open another forty minutes or so while the two men, the proprietor and new father, enjoyed a relaxing smoke...
...There are but two rooms: a cozy lounge, which just manages to fit two chairs, a small sofa, and a marble-topped, Spanish-style table-cum-bar...
...Our 22nd year...
...Nonsmokers should be glad we smoke," he adds...
...Bugbears include bad English (he sponsors the Community English Language Laboratory to improve the proficiency of Hong Kong people) and the anti-smoking movement now being exported from the States, which he calls "the biggest hypocrisy" in U.S...
...Afrikaans Gennan Albanian Greek Amharic Haitian Creole Arabic Hausa Armenian Hawaiian Bulgarian Hebrew Burmese Hindi Cantonese Hungarian Cherokee Icelandic Chinese Igbo Chinyanja Indonesian Choctaw Irish Czech Italian Danish Japanese Dutch Khmer English Kiowa Esperanto Kirundi Estonian Korean Finnish Lakota French Latin Fula Latvian Georgian Lenape Separate English as a Second Language Catalog also available...
...Outside their ranks, cigar smokers often find themselves slandered as either crass or snobbish, but I found the reverse to be true...
...But I am a non-smoker, not an anti-smoker, and betwixt the two lies a world of difference...
...And so I had no qualms about accepting an invitation to a "Big Smoke and Cocktails" put on to celebrate the official launch of a new Cuban cigar, much as I have happily attended weddings where a good friend's choice of spouse was not necessarily to my own taste...
...In Asia I rarely get asked to put out a cigar," he says...
...and a temperature-controlled backroom where regulars might keep boxes of their own stock...
...BUDICINFORIJITI Audio-Forum, Room G311, 96 Broad St., Guilford, CT 06437 Tel: (203) 453-9794 THE LANGUAGE SOURCE Tel: 1-800-345-8501 • Fax: (203) 453-9774 Lithuanian Malay Mandarin Mohawk Mongolian More' Navajo Northern Sotho Norwegian Passamaquoddy Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Sanskrit Scots Gaelic Serbo-Croatian Shona Sign Language Sinhalese Slovak Southern Sotho Spanish Swahili Swedish Tagalog Telugu Thai Tibetan Tlingit Tswana Turkish Twi Ukrainian Urdu Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh Xhosa Yiddish Yoruba Zulu The American Spectator March 1994 63...
...It's all the blasted Americans," he says...
...What sort of a world is it where the president of the United States is filmed playing with a cigar, chewing desperately on the end because he dare not light up and enjoy...
...Back in June, when his wife gave birth to a son, he burst into the Divan just before closing time all excited...
...Like other American refugees, he appreciates the Divan more if only because he is well aware that political conditions would deny him the pleasure at home...
...second home, a place to relax, have a smoke, enjoy a coffee, and do it all in peace...
...It's not just a place to buy cigars," says the company's Cuban manager, Abel Gonzalez...
...It all sounds rather a nice way of saying that Che brought all the old cigar experts together, threatened to hang them unless they joined his socialist enterprise, and then expropriated the Marquesa's home to put it in, but there you have it...
...Stretching out on the sofa, he explains the difference...
...There is an exquisite tiled floor, an espresso machine, and a decent selection of rum and brandies, but the Cohiba Cigar Divan tends to be cherished more for what it doesn't have: no fax machine, no cigarette smokers, and (usually, if not officially) no women...
...To the contrary, its back room is full of all the famous Cuban brands: Montecristo, H. Upmann, Romeo y Julieta, Ramon Allones—all the brands denied Americans because of the embargo...
...Once inside that door the men are treated more as family than patrons...
...And sad to say too that on the very day theboys were getting together to launch the new Cohiba series, Cathay Pacific—Hong Kong's unofficial flag carrier and a veritable symbol of British pluck and comfort—announced that starting in March its flights to Europe would all be non-smoking...
...Che Guevara might seem an unlikely hero for this bunch, but this is Hong Kong, where businessmen speculate in Mao buttons and a bar named for the Russian president (The Yeltsin Inn) has been making money almost since the failed Soviet coup...
...S ad to say, however, that even in The Land of Laissez-Faire (the government hates it when you say that), free men find themselves on the defensive...
...He pauses for a moment and takes a puff of the reason for today's celebration: the new Cohiba "Siglo" series launched last year to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the cigar...
...As we talk a beautiful Filipina David has hired delivers a splendid rendition of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes...
...In these sort of times, places like the Cohiba Cigar Divan become little oases of sanity...
...The American war of independence," he reminds me, "was fought on the price of tobacco...
...No wonder Nicholas James Anthony, another regular, calls it "the happiest 275 square feet in Asia...
...But they turned out to be the most agreeable sort of chaps you could want to meet...
...He said to me, Jimmy, there's no choice about it...
...Quite...
...Take Jimmy, a youngish chef from Lamma Island who declines to provide me with his last name...
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...it was tobacco that sustained the American soldier in the trenches...
...In a colony founded upon the right of Englishmen to sell opium to Chinese in defiance of God's and China's law, Che's sins might even seem venial...
...Abel Gonzalez told him to sit down...
...Of course, the Divan does not limit itself to Cohibas...
...It's the kind of place where when somebody new walks in, if he's got a cigar in his hand he knows he automatically has the keys to the door...
...history...
...Back home I would be executed...
...p residing over all this is David Tang, the brash, Cambridge-educated taipan of the Pacific Cigar Company whose other ventures include the colony's more famous Shanghai-style China Club atop the old Bank of China building...
...Our new 56-page catalog is yours for the asking—just call, write, or fax...
...Tucked away in a little corner of the Mandarin Hotel, it is teeny even by Hong Kong's cramped standards...
...Inside the Divan itself I sat next to 62 The American Spectator March 1994 Peter Coker, an American broker who hails from Manhattan but has worked in Mexico and Shanghai and plans to spend this New Years' in Havana...
...Although the anti-smoking campaign has yet to reach the fevered pitch it has in America, legislation has been proposed to banish tobacco advertising from the airwaves and the movement has progressed to a degree that the Divan feels it necessary to publish a listing of "cigar friendly restaurants...
...Apart from David Tang himself I did not know a soul there, and I don't even know David all that well...
...Named for Sidney Greenstreet's rival public house to Rick's Café Americain in Casablanca, the Blue Parrot is a men's dinner club...
Vol. 27 • March 1994 • No. 3
