Along with medicines, cigarettes were actually the earliest and most advertised products in both newspapers, as well as in the streets of Shanghai. As early as in the 1920s, the cigarette market engaged in an genuine process of diversification and segmentation, on the production side, reflecting an increasing competition among advertisers (boh manufacturing companies and distributors). As the Chinese were said to favor British cigarettes using "Virginia yellow tobacco" rather than "blended" and aromatic cigarettes used by the most popular American brands, the former, therefore, represented the majority of advertisements during the entire period.* Yet Shanghai smokers were offered an ever-widening array of brands and sorts of tobacco between the early 1920s and the late 1940s.

As for terminology, the term "xiangyan" (香烟) was the most popular in advertisements. Yet the term "juanyan" (捲煙) - that placed a special emphasis on the method of production (捲 juan = to roll) and the actual making of cigarettes - appeared occasionnally in an advertisement for the "Shanghai Association of tobacco, soap, candles and match manufacturers" in 1949.

* Source: Crow, 1937: 5-8