"Madame Cigarettes: Cambodia's Last Hand-Roller"
- Jean-Michel Gallet
- 11 hours ago
- 10 min read
“Madame Cigarettes? Yes, of course, she’s still working,” Patrice, a Frenchman and restaurateur who has lived in Battambang for 11 years, tells me. And at 75 years old, Madame Chir Kim Hao, alias “Madame Cigarettes,” still enjoys undeniable notoriety because she continues to practice a trade—cigarette rolling—of which she is one of the very last representatives in Cambodia. This portrait will also serve to recall the turbulent recent history of this country.
History of Tobacco Use in Cambodia
“Long ago, since time immemorial,” an elderly Cambodian woman tells me, in every city, even every village, there was a “cigarette roller”—often a woman—“whose job was to manually make cigarettes one by one.” Tobacco consumption is ancient in Cambodia. Thus, Charles Lemire, a postal clerk in Saigon (1865-1870), recounts in his 1869 travelogue from Phnom Penh to Oudong the incessant activity of streets and markets where “in the evening, gambling circles spring up right in the street, next to fruit sellers, street restaurants, and tobacco vendors.” Smoking seems to have been an activity practiced by all classes of society. Thus, the same Lemire, visiting the Royal Palace in Oudong, notes: “around the King, mandarins and servants knelt with hands clasped. They smoke cigarettes and occasionally rest on their heels.”
If tobacco use, whether smoked or chewed, dates back to ancient times, the arrival of the French in 1863 changed the way it was consumed. Indeed, before that date, cigarette paper was unknown in Cambodia, and smoked tobacco was rolled in leaves—called “sluk sangkae”—from a tree named “daeum sangkae” (1), a practice that still exists but has become marginal. For about 150 years now, cigarette rollers have gradually relied more and more on the cigarette paper we know today. This activity was also competed with by the establishment, during the French protectorate (1863-1953), of an industrial production unit in Phnom Penh (2).
What became of this activity after the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia in 1975?
The lives of the Khmers were then completely upended. All cities were emptied of their inhabitants, and all Cambodians, when not physically eliminated, were assigned to two tasks: either agricultural production or earthworks or irrigation. However, during this period from which the “New Khmer Man” was to emerge, all symbols and practices from previous eras were banned (currency, property, markets, schools, religion, non-rice crops, family structures especially by separating parents and children), tobacco use persisted.
In the few rare photos where dignitaries of this bloody regime appear, some are photographed smoking a cigarette. Several testimonies, as well as a study by IRASEC — Institut de recherche sur l’Asie du Sud-Est contemporaine — (3) also confirm that Khmer Rouge cadres and soldiers had not given up tobacco consumption. This led some to say that “tobacco was the only vice the Khmer Rouge allowed themselves.” A friend, to whom I reported this view, gave me what seems to me a more realistic explanation: “in fact, back then, smoking was not considered a vice, but as natural an act as eating or drinking.”
What about the other Khmers, forced in the countryside to work often beyond human strength? According to various testimonies, smoking remained a dependency that some could not do without. But moreover, according to a friend who endured forced labor camps, “many began smoking during the Khmer Rouge period, not out of taste for tobacco, but because smoking was the only hunger suppressant they had.” But smoking then often meant inhaling smoke from a mixture of dried herbs and leaves (4).
“My little brother had taken to smoking cassava leaves. It’s possible,” my friend continues, “that the lung cancer from which he later died was the cause.”
However, it sometimes happened that to the mixture of leaves and herbs, some added a bit of tobacco (5). For, surprisingly, tobacco could be found. Where did it come from? My friend provides an explanation: “the Khmer Rouge forbade smoking during work. But they tolerated us growing a few tobacco plants here and there. And above all, they grew it themselves.” Tobacco that then fueled various traffics to which the Khmer Rouge were not strangers. For those who had managed to hide a bit of gold (6) could exchange it for this now precious good. Thus, throughout the Khmer Rouge period, tobacco was a tolerated exchange currency by the masters of the country at that time (1975-1979), a role it continued to play afterward.
Thus, the same friend provides enlightening testimony: “early 1979, I was in the Pursat region. Ahead of the advancing Vietnamese troops, the Khmer Rouge evacuated us about thirty kilometers north of Pursat. As Vietnamese pressure continued, our tormentors decided on another evacuation, further north. In the general confusion, my mother, myself, and the few surviving family members decided to escape and try to return to Phnom Penh, the capital, about 250 kilometers away. But how to survive the whole journey? Now, the Khmer Rouge grew tobacco near their camps. Spotting that near our last camp, I loaded up as many leaves as we could carry, and we used those leaves as exchange currency to feed ourselves during our journey to the capital.”
The bloody Khmer Rouge period (1975-1979) was followed by ten years of Vietnamese military “presence.” Manual cigarette production could then resume in cities and villages. But very gradually, especially between 1979 and 1989, when the country, bled dry and decimated (nearly half its population, especially its urban part, had been annihilated), had far other concerns for its daily survival. Later, with the spread of Western lifestyles, cigarette consumption increasingly turned to almost exclusive reliance on industrial production. Manual cigarette production will very soon be just a memory, a memory that a few people like “Madame Cigarettes” still keep alive, but, presumably, for a very limited time.
Who is “Madame Cigarettes”?
Mrs. Chir Kim Hao is 75 years old. She still has a fine presence in her little workshop, “but not for much longer,” she is quick to tell me. “My back hurts too much now. Soon, I’ll retire to one of my sons’ places.” So let’s take advantage of the last days of her activity to get to know her.
“I was born around 1944 in a village about ten kilometers south of Battambang. My parents were farmers,” she recounts.
“My mother, as a side activity, also worked as a cigarette roller, and I myself started rolling cigarettes at the age of 12. I got married at 17.”
“After my marriage, my husband and I decided to settle in Battambang and devote ourselves entirely to cigarette making.” Those were happy years for the couple (1961-1975).
Chir Kim Hao confirms: “it happened that we processed dozens of kilos of tobacco per day (7). The whole family pitched in then. Neighbors also came to lend a hand.”
The Khmer Rouge (1970-1975)
On April 17, 1975, Khmer Rouge armed forces seized the capital Phnom Penh and ordered its immediate evacuation. On April 24, it was Battambang’s turn, the country’s second city, to receive the evacuation order. Anyone then trying to escape that order was shot.
Forced to leave Battambang with her family, Chir Kim Hao took refuge in her native village, which at least provided shelter. But then, how to avoid suspicion of being considered by the Khmer Rouge as “traitors to Angkar’s cause” (8). “What we feared most,” she tells me, “was being seen as urban exploiters, henchmen of the Lon Nol regime (9), which could have meant a death sentence.”
“We then resorted to a ruse. Here in Cambodia, we know plants that darken the skin. With that dye, we could pass ourselves off to the Khmer Rouge as peasants, which may have saved our lives.”
From 1975 to 1979, Chir Kim Hao and her husband were assigned to an agricultural work brigade (10): “it was very hard. We were continually hungry, especially after 1977. But I was born in the countryside and had kept the habit of peasants’ grueling labor,” she is quick to specify. “We lived perpetually in uncertainty about tomorrow. And above all, we had to endure separation from the children (11). I had five at the time and was expecting a sixth.”
But even in those difficult times, Chir Kim Hao did not completely abandon her tobacco-related activity: “during that period, I planted a bit of tobacco here and there. I made cigarettes that my mother brought to the Khmer Rouge in exchange for a little rice, because we had so little to eat then.”
“And in 1979, we returned to Battambang and settled this time in the city center, in the little workshop where I still work.”
A New Prosperous Period Before Gradual Decline
The gradual return of Cambodians to their country after the Paris Accords (October 23, 1991) meant for Mrs. Chir Kim Hao a second prosperous era, at a time when cigarette sales still relied essentially on manual production: “in the early 90s, I sold two tons of cigarettes a year. It was crazy,” she recalls nostalgically. A time when Madame Cigarettes used a form of advertising marketing: on the labels, she put the phrase: “grandpa says: it’s good — grandma says: it smells good!”
But that era is now gone: “nowadays, I struggle to sell 100 kg a year! Because of whom? Those who keep saying smoking is bad for health.. And then, the fault of those big factories that produce tobacco for nothing” (12), she rants. Today, Madame Cigarettes’ customers are mostly tourists who buy one or two packs “as a souvenir.”
Playing the Tourist
“And how much do your cigarettes cost?”
“I recently had to raise the price to survive. In the old days, it was 2,000 riels (half a euro) for a pack of 60 cigarettes. Now it’s 4,000 riels per pack (one euro).” I give 10,000 riels (2.5 euros) and receive in exchange 2 packs to which Chir Kim Hao adds, as a bonus, a few cigarettes and two mini-cigars (13). I decline the change (0.5 euro) she wants to give me:
“Then it will be for the monks tomorrow morning during their daily food quest,” she tells me.
Learn to Roll Your Cigarettes the Cambodian Way
As for the cigarettes bought, they will serve to rekindle nostalgia among some Khmers settled in France for a bygone era.
“Where does the tobacco come from?” I asked Chir Kim Hao.
“In the old days, it was produced all over Cambodia. Now it’s only produced in the Kompong Cham region. Fortunately with several varieties: blond tobacco and several varieties of dark tobacco. I also make very mild-tasting cigarettes made of blond tobacco, honey, lemon, and coffee.”
“And the cigarette papers?”
“I buy them in Phnom Penh. They come from Japan. There are also Vietnamese cigarette papers, but their quality is inferior,” Chir Kim Hao confides to explain her choice. As for the glue, Madame Cigarettes extracts it from lotus seeds.
The manufacturing technique, though requiring a certain dexterity, is quite simple to use. It is identical in principle to the one used a few decades ago in rural France when the smoker used a “cigarette rolling machine.” Except here, the machine is replaced partly by a half-split bamboo stick that a rotating motion sets in motion, and partly the roller by a bill inserted into the stick.
“I use either bills from the Sangkum era (1953-1970), that is, when Cambodia was ruled solely by Norodom Sihanouk (1922-2012), or bills from the time when the country was ruled by Lon Nol (1970-1975). I prefer the latter because they are sturdier and resist wear better,” Chir Kim Hao confides.
“Why bills from those eras?” I asked. “They have two advantages,” she replies: “their size matches the cigarette paper exactly. And besides, they’re no longer any use!” (14). She also insists on demonstrating “her” cigarette rolling machine: “I bought it from the Vietnamese in 1985, but I still mainly use the manual method.”
Neither age nor its troubles, nor the slowdown in sales affect Madame Cigarettes’ morale: “look at my left hand. There’s a small spot. It was tiny at my birth, then it grew. The ‘lok kru Khmer’ (pagoda sage) saw wings and a bird in it, and predicted that I would thus fly to the Buddhist paradise.”
(1) “sangkae”: tree with hard white wood. Scientific name: “combretum quadragalare” or “lacriferum”
(2): At the Bophana audiovisual center in Phnom Penh, one can discover a propaganda film made by the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979) showing the factory in operation. This at least proves that cigarettes continued to be produced under that regime.
(3) “Tobacco production in riverside plantations of the Tonlé Sap and Mekong in Kompong Cham, Battambang, and Kandal was not abandoned under the Khmer Rouge. This resulted in two types of cigarettes made at PO-4 from tobacco conditioned at Ba-4. Reserved for high-ranking cadres and military, the most prized bore the ‘Kotab’ brand. Unfiltered, the ‘Bayon’ or ‘Klok’ cigarettes were distributed to lower cadres and fighters. The ‘new people,’ for their part, could in some sectors claim 1 or 2 ‘Bayon’ or ‘Klok’ cigarettes per month.” Khmer Rouge Dictionary — IRASEC — May 2011
(4) see “Cambodia — The Gagged Smile” — p. 130
(5) see “The Murderous Utopia — A Survivor of the Cambodian Genocide Testifies” — p. 125
(6) see “Elimination” by Rithy Panh: “throughout this period, gold never stopped circulating discreetly. It had extraordinary power. With gold, things that had disappeared could be made to appear: penicillin, for example. Rice, sugar, tobacco. The Khmer Rouge fully participated in this traffic.”
(7) according to Chir Kim Hoa, a worker can process three kilos of tobacco per day
(8) Angkar or “the organization” was the name frequently used to refer to the overall “power” that during the Khmer Rouge era ran the country.
(9) General Lon Nol had, in 1970, amid the turmoil caused by the Vietnam-American war, overthrown Norodom Sihanouk’s regime and governed, with American aid, until 1975 a country where his republican armed forces controlled territory shrinking daily under Khmer Rouge military pressure.
(10) the Khmer Rouge had abolished individual property and collectivized the land. In general, peasants—or those who had managed to pass as such—were assigned to agricultural work.
(11) as soon as they could walk, surviving children were taken from their parents to be raised collectively and receive “revolutionary education,” which included among other things: renouncing one’s personality, renouncing critical thinking, renouncing a sense of property... “to reach the ultimate stage of communism ... then the people will live in a society of happiness and abundance.” In reality, this “education” consisted mainly of droning revolutionary slogans.
(12) see “Le Toqué” - May 2012 - Mathieu Damperon
(13) in fact, these cigars consist of tobacco rolled not in tobacco leaves, but in sluk sangkae leaves.
(14) one of the first measures taken by the Khmer Rouge was to abolish all currency.
Text and illustrations by Jean-Michel GALLET (Route Map 62)