Eat, drink and be merry. That’s what Spring Festival is all about. But there are millions of people, too, who love to let happiness go up in smoke.

Offering cigarettes to guests is a traditional Chinese way of showing respect for them. A cup of tea and cigarettes are perhaps the most common way of welcoming a guest in China, especially during festive occasions.

No wonder, 40 percent of the people surveyed recently said they would smoke at least twice the usual number of cigarettes during the Spring Festival because of all those gatherings and parties. Only 20 percent of the respondents said they would refuse a cigarette when offered one. Why can’t the others do the same? Because they could be seen as being rude, said more than half of the respondents. Fifteen percent feared they could be taken as “someone who cannot get along well with others”.

The Think­ tank Research Center for Health Development and sohu.com survey shows 61 percent Chinese think offering a cigarette is useful for socializing, and 52 percent have offered cigarettes to others. The study surveyed 3,800 people, 64 percent of them men.

One­ third of those surveyed were smokers, out of which 57 percent said they couldn’t give up smoking because of the offering­ and­ accepting culture. “People have accepted offering cigarettes as an effective way of making friends,” research center director Wu Yiqun says.

China has more than 350 million smokers, catering to the tobacco market that is worth 500 billion yuan. “The survey shows we still have a lot of work to do,” Wu says. “Since Beijing is trying to make the Olympic Games smoke­ free, it is time to let people know that offering a cigarette is a bad habit and it should be given up immediately.”

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study of 15-year-old school pupils’ scholastic (学业的) performance in mathematics, science, and reading undertaken by the OECD (经济合作与发展组织). A closer look at the reading tests, shows the interesting fact that girls are outperforming boys in reading and that this is associated with girls’ greater enjoyment of reading.

One key area which has a major impact on reading performance, is reading for enjoyment rather than simply for study or school work purposes. Interestingly, the PISA study found that in all countries assessed (apart from South Korea), girls read for enjoyment more than boys. The study found that in all the countries assessed, just over half of boys (52%), but almost three-quarters of girls (73%) said that they read for enjoyment which may come as a surprise to many.

In countries such as Estonia and the Netherlands, the difference between boys and girls was most significant, where they found a 30% gap or more between the genders. Additionally in places such as Austria and Liechtenstein, very low levels of boys expressed interest in reading (40% or less), which are worrying statistics.

However, not all countries had such an obvious trend. In places like Japan, boys and girls read for enjoyment at an almost identical level, with 54% of boys and 58% of girls reporting that they enjoy reading. And there were a few countries and regions that scored very highly in boys reading enjoyment, for example in Albania, Indonesia and Shanghai in China where at least 80% of boys enjoy reading. Although these positive numbers are matched and passed by girls who reported an even higher level of reading enjoyment (90% or higher).

An interesting area which the PISA study looked at was the types of literature that both girls and boys generally enjoy. There were clear differences in the choices boys and girls make when deciding on what to read. Boys were found to enjoy reading magazines, newspapers and comic books more than girls. Girls were found to be twice as likely to enjoy works of fiction than boys.

Countries need to think about ways to inspire interest for boys in reading and ensure that they are exposed to a wide variety of different types of literature from a young age. Given that in OECD countries two in three boys only read newspapers for pleasure proves that there is work to be done.

Lee hyun-seok grew up in South Korea addicted to Japanese manga (漫画) series such as “Dragon Ball” and “Slam Dunk”. As soon as he could, he migrated to Tokyo to build a successful career as a manga artist and editor. Then in the early 2000s came “webtoons” (网络漫画), a South Korean cartoon innovation optimized for smartphones. Mr. Lee was at first unimpressed. Compared with manga’s inventive graphic styles and profound plots, he found webtoons just the opposite.

Yet Japanese manga is being eclipsed (黯然失色) by Korean webtoons. Last year the manga print market shrank by 2.3% to ¥265bn ($1.9bn). The size of the global webtoons market was meanwhile valued at $3.7bn. Manga is going digital slowly, in part because it is still designed for print, so awkward to read on smartphones. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, Mr. Lee abandoned manga for the webtoon industry in 2014.

Though webtoons such as “Itaewon Class” and “Solo Levelling” have become popular among Japanese consumers, most Japanese publishers have stuck stubbornly to manga. “The Japanese industry is very conservative,” sighs Mr. Lee. The manga industry’s business model, in which stories are first published in weekly magazines and then in books, has hardly changed since the 1960s. Webtoons have grown so fast, in part because they can be read more easily. Other recent South Korean exports, such as the Netflix sensation “Squid Game” and BTS, a boy band, have taken the world by storm thanks to the same combination of innovation and smart marketing behind webtoons.

Some are concerned about the future. Japan’s manga fans are, like all its population, aging. The average reader of the Weekly Shonen Magazine, a manga for children launched in 1989, is now over 30. “Manga could end up as old people’s culture,” warns Mr Lee. “Children these days are viewing through webtoons on their smartphones. Why not make something that suits their taste?”