Entrancing as the cartoon was, I felt kind of sad about some of its messages. Some were indisputably good, but others made me want to say, 'No way! Don't change that! That's China!'

The cartoon was playing on a flatscreen TV inside a fancy, air-con bus this morning in Beijing. It seemed to be part of a 'public politeness campaign' that's being waged in the lead-up to the Olympics.

In between news items and assorted clips of televisual interest, these brightly-coloured, cleverly-drawn animations would start to play. The idea seemed to be that the cartoons would show wrongheaded ways of behaving, and so function like a Chinese 'Miss Manners' - albeit a Miss Manners appearing on a TV screen in public bus.

Intriguingly, these were the dictums being doled out by the Chinese government:

1. don't do a tummy t-shirt roll;

2. don't treat your wife like a carthorse (illustrated by having three men sitting at a table smoking and drinking, while a woman serves them food and runs about attending to their every need, all the while bent double under the weight of the men's children riding her like a horse);

3. don't clamber on large buddhas or behave badly at cultural sites;

4. don't spit (except into a spitoon);

5. don't litter from tour buses or at tourist attractions;

6. don't eat too many wild, exotic creatures - because then there'll be none left to eat in future (in the cartoon, a giant pair of chopsticks swoops down from the sky and plucks up a duck, a whale and a tiger, before clacking emptily once all the animals are eaten).

So here's the deal: Number 2 is obviously a good thing, as is Number 5. The injuction in Number 3 not to climb large monuments, such as the world's largest buddha, is probably a very sensible idea. Number 6's politics were unclear to me, but the animation was hilarious, and as to spitting in Number 4 - I'm not even going to go there. It's a feature of China that I can handle.

BUT - butbutbut - You leave that Tummy T-Shirt Roll alone.

To attack the tummy-roll is to take things entirely too far. The roll is sacred. It's the definitive symbol of a hot day in China. You see, when the weather gets steamy, and you get sweaty, then - boom! - if you're a man, you roll up your shirt so it exposes your large belly, and you get on with the rest of your day.

Simple and effective, the system can also be extended to the 'Pant Leg Roll', in which you walk around with your pants hoiked up around your kneecaps.

I happen to like the tummy roll system, so I'm sorry to hear it's under threat. I can only hope it'll still be in evidence when the Olympics rolls around - otherwise, you're just going to have to take my word for it.