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Background: Nearly 2/3 of Chinese men smoke.Restricting smoking in public venues helps to protect the health of non-smokers, and creates a social norm for not smoking.Effective on May 1, 2011, the Chinese Ministry of Health banned smoking in public venues.Prior to the ban the occurrence of smoking and its dissuasion by staff were not known.Methods: We conducted a survey to assess the prevalence of smoking in restaurants, cyber-cafés, and hospitals in West-Beijing District, as well as in all railway stations and long-haul bus stations in urban Beijing in April 2011.During a 30-minute surreptitious observation, we watched smoking behavior in those public venues, and whether staff attempted to dissuade the behavior.We accounted for the complex survey design in analyzing the data.Results: Overall, 58% of the venues had ≥1 person smoking during the observation period.Presence of smoking was 15% in hospital buildings; in comparison, the percentage was 94% in cyber-cafés (RRweighted=6.1, 95% CI: 1.6-24), 48% in restaurants (RRweighted=3.1, 95% CI: 0.83-12), and 45% in long-haul bus stations (RRweighted=3.0, 95% CI: 0.63-14).In the long-haul bus stations where smoking was observed, dissuasion by staff was observed in 20% of the venues; in comparison, dissuasion was observed in 8.4% of the restaurants (RRweighted=0.42, 95%CI: 0.05-3.6) and 6.7% of the cyber-cafés (RRweighted=0.33, 95% CI: 0.02-5.6).Conclusions: Smoking in most public venues was common in this urban Beijing district, while dissuasion of smoking seldom occurred.Stricter smoking control measures in public venues (e.g., requiring public venues to visibly post tip-off telephone numbers and fming public venues violating the new indoor clean air law) should be implemented.