BEIJING, June 24 (Xinhua) -- Two movies, including Dying to Survive, which generated a total box office of 3.1 billion yuan (451 million U.S. dollars) on the Chinese mainland, and a TV series have "won" the annual Dirty Ashtray Award for having rampant smoking scenes.
The Chinese Association on Tobacco Control made the announcement while releasing monitoring results of 30 films and 30 TV series, all popular, domestically-produced works that were aired in 2018.
One of the most popular movies of last year, Dying to Survive depicted the dilemma of leukemia patients who have to count on unapproved cheaper generic drugs to survive. Tobacco-related scenes totaled 16.8 minutes, or 14.5 percent of the total length of the film, according to the association.
More than 86 percent of the monitored movies had tobacco-related footage, with an average total length of nearly 2 minutes for each film. One third of the TV series had smoking scenes, with an average length of 3.6 minutes per series.
Compared with 2007, the average number and length of smoking scenes in a film in 2018 dropped by 47 percent and nearly 34 percent respectively, while an 82 percent decrease was recorded in both the average number and length of smoking scenes in a TV series, the association said.
