'I've travelled 20 provinces telling people how bad smoking is, and now I want to talk to you. You don't really want to smoke, do you? Why don't you put that out right now and take some time to read this material?' Zhang Yue asked a startled smoker in central Beijing, who responded by stamping out his cigarette butt.
A native of Liaoning province, 43-year-old Mr Zhang has been travelling around China by train since November, confronting every smoker he sees with warnings about the dangers of tobacco.
The former stock trader has already spent 40,000 yuan (HK$37,600) of his own money to produce literature he gives to every smoker he encounters and business cards labelling him 'China's Anti-Smoking Man', and on giving compensation money to anyone who agrees to let him crush their cigarettes.
'My father was a heavy smoker and he was also a teacher in my school. He loved to smoke and work at the same time, and some of my earliest memories are of being tormented by his secondhand smoke,' Mr Zhang said.
Being a filial son, he said he suffered in silence in a toxic environment, and watched 12 close relatives ruin their health and deplete their savings by smoking.
But when Mr Zhang's younger brother came to live with him in 1990 and started to smoke, Mr Zhang decided to put his foot down and make his brother quit.