His career began making cigars in the late 1950’s at a tobacco factory in Shi-In city. He developed superior skills at making hand-made cigars during this time. One day in autumn 1964, a Communist Party secretary from the factory ordered Mr. Guao Rong Fan and three co workers to pack up their personal belongings and go to Cheng Du city. Thus he had to leave his home and family unsure of what lay ahead. This would have been quite worrying as so many Chinese people were starving and living in terrible conditions.
The four selected workers arrived at the tobacco and drug department located in Cheng Du city. The old man recalls” at beginning we didn’t know what they wanted us to do, then we found out it was to make cigars for General He. We stayed in Cheng Du city for about 4 months, working 8 hours a day, and everybody must produce 100 to 200 cigars per day.”
Not long after they returned to their homes, they were sent back to the Chen Du city factory, this time put to work to make cigars for Chairman Mao Ze Dong.
Mr. Guao Rong Fan gave a detailed insight of the cigar making process. “The techniques required to hand-make cigars are very high. First of all we need to select the best quality tobacco leaves, process them roughly, remove the stems, and then steam the leaves in Vietnamese cinnamon and the top quality of Chinese rice wine, to increase moisture, followed by bleaching with the best jasmine tea. The procedures varied according to different desired flavour. After the cooking, baking and drying process in the sun, the leaves are rolled and finally dried in an oven, there were 10 cigars packaged in each box and then be taken by special delivery to Beijing.”
The old man further explained more requirements in the making of a top quality cigar. Not only was the flavour to be good, but also the ash had to be of a high standard. Snowy white and able to hold a complete shape when the ash falls to the ground, make the optimum cigar.
The security involved for leaders of the Central Committee (the CCP) of the Chinese government is very high. The room where the work was carried out was like a fortress. Steel wire bars around the walls. The finished products were locked up in a large cast iron chest. All the doors and windows were sealed. Thus preventing anyone tampering with the goods.
Even with these tight security measures a huge “breach” was created. Mr. Guao Rong Fan recalls the time he returned from holidays. He took the seals off the door, entered the room and tried to grab the light switch cord, but it had disappeared. Immediately he reported the incident to the senior officials. The security bureau and the district military were called in to investigate. “Think about it, the seals, the doors are all well locked, how can the light switch cord have disappeared, what happened?” After a lot of drama, the security people climbed up to the roof, lifted the tiles and discovered the mice had taken the light switch cord to make a bed for themselves.
Such small mice could create such a security threat to the leaders of the country.
In 1971, Guao Rong Fan, Bing Fu Huang, Yue Rong Jiang were all moved to Beijing from Shi-In. This cigar making group was called “Group 132” following the cigar no.13 and no.2 favoured by Mao Ze Dong and some officials. They were located in a building opposite Middle-South Ocean (Chong Nan Hai, the head quarters and residence for the high officials of the government.) Here the security was also very tight. There were electrical wires all over the walls, soldiers guarded the doors.
“Our work was directly supervised by the Administration department of Central Committee; all the raw materials were still provided from Shi-In city. “. Every month they had to produce 15 to 20 boxes of cigars.
After 1976, “group 132” ceased producing “especially made cigars” all of the three workers, including Mr. Guao Rong Fan became employees of the Beijing Cigarettes Factory.
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