bicycle attendent Guo Guiyou stood guard outside a busy ....

reporter Verna Yu Pedestrians walk past a sputum in Beijing, 17 November 2007. As bicycle attendent Guo Guiyou stood guard outside a busy downtown metro station, he produced a loud, coarse noise at the bottom of his throat resembling the tearing of Velcro. Although there is now a wide consensus that spitting is regarded as "uncivilised" behaviour, as Beijing's pre-Olympics manners campaigns term it, spitting is still pretty much a trademark sight and sound across the country.