(Photo/Stage photo of Mr.Six)

Blockbuster film “Mr. Six,” starring Feng Xiaogang, was given the "Top Ashtray Prize" for the most smoking scenes of all domestically produced films and television series. The film featured a smoking scene every 1.3 minutes on average.

The Chinese Association on Tobacco Control (CATC) said on Tuesday that the movie sets a bad example for young viewers.

According to a report by CATC, which analyzed 30 Chinese movies and 30 television series shown last year, the two-hour-long “Mr. Six” contains 102 smoking scenes altogether. Two more films, “The Dead End” and “The Hundred Regiments Offensive,” contained 23 and 20 smoking scenes respectively. Ashtray “trophies” were presented to the movies, but no one officially accepted them.

The report said that, thanks to government-led anti-smoking campaigns and increased public awareness in the last decade, the situation in China has improved. There were no smoking scenes in eight of the 30 movies analyzed, an increase of more than 15 percent from 2007, when the association began carrying out such checks.

During the same period, the average number of smoking scenes in all films dropped by 50 percent. Most of these scenes took place in public spaces, workplaces and family homes, the report said.

In 2009 and 2011, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television issued two notices related to smoking scenes in films and TV.

Of the 30 TV series sampled last year, 60 percent had no smoking scenes, an increase of 55 percent from 2007. Both the number of smoking scenes and the length of each scene have dropped substantially, the report said.