This Time Is Real: How Tonggui Ye Finally Quit Smoking

In brief

Tonggui Ye, an engineer, started smoking at about 18 and was up to two and a half packs a day, quarreling with his wife about it all the time. His longest try at quitting lasted half a day. In January 1997 he told her, “I’ll quit smoking from now on” — and did.

Get out of my way

Some habits stop being something you do and become something you defend. If you’ve ever snapped at the person who asked you to stop, you’ll understand Tonggui.

His home was always full of smoke. The elders in the family coughed. So did his wife and his daughter.

When his wife told him she couldn’t take the smoke any longer and asked him to quit, he often got irritated. “This is the only pleasure I have,” he remembers telling her. “Why can’t you let me keep it? If you can’t take it, then get out of my way.”

It had started as a joke. As an undergraduate of about 18, classmates playfully handed him one or two cigarettes. Gradually he was hooked.

In graduate school, living in a dormitory of single men, the cigarettes were always there while they chatted to kill time. A few a day became a pack, then two and a half packs. He liked them strong, inhaled deep, and blew the smoke out through his nose. His nostrils, his teeth and his fingers turned yellow.

At home, the quarrels never stopped. His wife hid his cigarettes many times; he bought more. When he was no longer allowed to smoke in the house, he smoked outdoors or in the bathroom.

Later, studying for his Ph.D. in Beijing, he was in a singles’ dormitory again, and the cigarettes were his “inseparable partners more than ever.” The ashtray filled up every time he took a break. Half of his small monthly salary went on cigarettes, though his wife and child were ill and short of money and he couldn’t help them.

“At that time, I already felt smoking was not right,” he writes, “but I couldn’t quit.”

If you’ve ever known exactly what something was costing you, and done it anyway — that isn’t because you didn’t care.

Candies on the table

He began to cough hard and grew very thin. When he went home for Chinese New Year, his wife tried to help him be determined. She thought of everything tasty she could, and put out candies, cakes and all kinds of snacks for whenever he wanted a cigarette.

It didn’t work. “I could skip meals for a whole day, but it was so hard for me to stop smoking for just half an hour,” he writes.

He tried to quit many times. He tried to sleep through the craving, tried to forget about it. His longest attempt lasted half a day.

“My powerlessness distressed me.”

If you’ve ever tried every trick and still gone back within hours, perhaps you know that particular kind of tiredness.

In late October 1996, he noticed changes in his wife and daughter, who had begun practicing Falun Dafa. After he attended a lecture by Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa, he decided to practice too.

But he kept smoking. When his wife asked him why, now that he was a practitioner, he told her it would be the last thing he gave up — though he’d cut down on the packs.

This time is real

One afternoon in January 1997, he sat in a group study that was reading Lecture 7 of Zhuan Falun, the main book of the practice.

The passage on smoking asks practitioners a plain question: if you want to purify your body, why keep putting this into it? It calls smoking a strong desire — something people know is bad and still can’t stop — and suggests treating it as an attachment to let go of.

Something in it landed. “I am determined to give up smoking this time,” he thought.

The next morning he told his wife, “I’ll quit smoking from now on.”

She had heard it too many times to believe it. “If you really quit smoking,” she said, “I’ll quit eating.”

“This time is real,” he told her. “From this moment on, I will never touch cigarettes anymore except in dreams, where I’ve been tested many times.”

This time there were no candies on the table and no trick to get through the next half hour. There was only a decision, and the plain words he gave his wife.

Two years later, when he sat down to write about his practice, quitting was the first thing he wanted to share. “The first thing is that I quit smoking!” he wrote.

The man who once told his wife to get out of his way if she couldn’t take the smoke had finally put down the thing he’d been defending. His promise to her that morning had become the truth.

What this story may hold for you

• Tonggui knew smoking “was not right” and still couldn’t quit. Perhaps knowing and being able to are two different steps, and there’s no shame in the space between them.
• Candies, snacks, sleeping through the craving — none of it held. Sometimes what changes isn’t the method, but how you see the thing itself.
• He once defended his habit as “the only pleasure I have.” You might gently ask what yours is protecting, and what it’s costing the people you love.
• His wife had stopped believing him, and he quit anyway. You don’t need anyone’s faith in you before you begin.
• A miracle might be the body healing, or the heart letting go, or finding meaning again — or any mix of these.

If you’ve ever felt trapped by drinking or drugs, Sterling Campbell’s story may speak to you too.

A free guide for when quitting never sticks

If this story touched something in you, there are more like it.

Our free guide, When Quitting Never Sticks, gathers four true stories of people who tried to quit drinking, smoking or drugs again and again, and what changed for them, with a gentle page on how to begin.

It’s free. One email with the guide, then a few short letters. Unsubscribe any time.

Questions readers ask

Q: How do I quit smoking when I’ve failed so many times?

Tonggui’s longest attempt lasted half a day, after years of trying. What changed it for him came through a daily practice of reading Zhuan Falun: a passage that asked him to treat smoking as an attachment to let go of. If you want to stop smoking, a doctor or a quit-smoking service near you can help too.

Q: How do I stop fighting with my family about my smoking?

For years Tonggui and his wife quarreled about his smoking; he smoked in the bathroom and outdoors. Her hiding his cigarettes and putting out snacks didn’t stop him. What finally did was his own decision, told to her plainly: “This time is real.”

Q: Where does this story come from?

From Tonggui Ye’s own article, written in January 1999 and adapted as Case 40 in A Journey to Ultimate Health (Golden Lotus Press). The quotes are his own words as published in English.

A note on health

These stories share personal experiences and inner journeys. They cannot replace professional psychological or medical help, and please don’t stop or change any treatment because of a story. If you are in serious distress or crisis, please reach out to a qualified local counselor, doctor or crisis line.