According to records, as early as the end of the Ming Dynasty, tobacco was planted and smoked in Yunnan, and many people in Mengzi area of southern Yunnan also aired and smoked "orchid cigarettes". But Yunnan people generally accepted cigarettes at the beginning of the 20th century. When British and American machine-made cigarettes entered Yunnan, they attracted more and more people with brand-new flavor, exquisite production and packaging. In a short time, foreign cigarettes completely occupied the provincial capital market. In order to change this situation and revitalize local industries, some people of insight in the province began to set up their own tobacco industry. In the second year of Xuantong in Qing Dynasty (A.D. 19 10), Li Kunming Songmao and other five people set up a joint venture company to try to produce cigarettes by machine. A few years later, Mojiang Renyu raised 6.5438+0.5 million yuan, purchased equipment from Shanghai, hired technicians from other provinces, and recruited more than 100 workers, and founded the first enterprise in Yunnan tobacco industry-Asia Tobacco Company (predecessor of Kunming Cigarette Factory). They use the sun-dried tobacco leaves in this province as raw materials to produce machine-made cigarettes, including the famous "Chongjiu" brand, with a daily output of 300,000 cigarettes. Due to the poor quality of local sun-cured tobacco leaves and the low quality of cigarettes produced, it is difficult for the company's products to compete with foreign cigarettes. The company worked hard for several years, and finally stopped production on 1928 due to poor quality and lack of funds, and was reorganized into a government-run South China Tobacco Company.

From the frustration, Yunnan people realized that to develop tobacco industry, they must improve the quality of tobacco leaves, so they began to try to introduce foreign high-quality flue-cured tobacco. Prior to this, in order to reduce costs and expand dumping, British American Tobacco Company provided tobacco varieties and cultivation techniques from the United States and Turkey to Yunnan on 19 14, and carried out experimental cultivation in Tonghai, Yuxi and other places. Although this move has not achieved results, it is the first time that Yunnan has introduced American tobacco. 193 1 year, Long Yun, chairman of the provincial government, instructed to promote the cultivation of American tobacco in 34 counties including Tonghai. However, due to the control and monopoly of seeds by British American Tobacco Company, it also failed.

The outbreak of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression has brought opportunities to the development of Yunnan tobacco. After the July 7th Incident, some major tobacco producing areas such as Shandong and Henan successively fell, forcing many cigarette enterprises to seek raw materials in the rear. /kloc-in the winter of 0/939, Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Company intervened through the Minister of Finance, and Chang Chang, then the director of sericulture department of Yunnan University and then the technical director of the Ministry of Agriculture, successfully planted American flue-cured tobacco seeds in the eastern suburbs of Kunming. Yunnan local authorities also saw the potential value of flue-cured tobacco and decided to develop it as a new agricultural resource. Yunnan Tobacco Improvement Institute 194 1 was established by the provincial government, and introduced American flue-cured tobacco seeds from Henan, Shandong and France for trial planting and domestication. After comparative test, Jinyuan was finally selected as the popularized variety among some imported American varieties. The following year, the provincial government set up planting areas in seven counties including Kunming, Jiangchuan and Yuxi, planting 2727 mu of flue-cured tobacco. In order to promote the work smoothly, the provincial government set up a tobacco improvement branch (later changed to a workstation) in each promotion county to take charge of this work. The provincial government also specially held a training course for flue-cured tobacco technicians to train them, and then used these people as the backbone to publicize and guide farmers. The government provides tobacco seeds free of charge and obtains interest-free loans according to the planting area and the number of curing houses. By 1943, the province directly trained more than 0/000 tobacco farmers, realizing that "anyone who is engaged in planting American tobacco leaves has cultivation and smoking techniques". During this period, the provincial government successively established Yunnan Paper-making and Tobacco Reheating Factory. Together with the original tobacco improvement institute, the provincial tobacco production comprehensive management office was merged to unify the production and sales of flue-cured tobacco and form the integration of agriculture, industry and commerce. Due to proper measures, flue-cured tobacco planting in the province has developed rapidly. By the end of the Anti-Japanese War, Yunnan introduced the original seeds of flue-cured tobacco from American non-profit Morse Seed Company, and Yunnan Tobacco Improvement Institute was responsible for the variety renewal. Starting from 1946, the original Jinyuan varieties were replaced by "Dajinyuan", "Tezi 400" and "Tezi 40 1", and the flue-cured tobacco varieties were updated and gradually finalized. In particular, Dajinyuan (also known as "Honghuadajinyuan") has become the main variety of flue-cured tobacco in Yunnan. At this point, the advantages of Yunnan flue-cured tobacco began to take shape.