As tourists from China increasingly travel abroad, they have developed a stereotype of "uncivilised behaviour", which Vice Premier Wang Yang said in May "damaged the image of the Chinese people".

The image-conscious National Tourism Administration has now published the 64-page Guidebook for Civilised Tourism, including illustrations, aimed at reining in unruly behaviour.

Instructions include do not pick your nose in public, leave footprints on public toilet seats or steal life jackets.

The rulebook explains that if tourists take the safety device from under their plane seat "if a dangerous situation arises then someone else will not have a life jacket".

It also warned travellers to keep their nose-hair neatly trimmed and, if they had to pick their teeth, never to use their fingers.

The handbook also dispensed country-specific advice: Chinese visitors to Germany should only snap their fingers to beckon dogs, not humans.

Several countries, including debt-laden European nations, have eased visa restrictions to attract increasingly affluent Chinese tourists, but reports have also emerged of complaints about etiquette.

And the issues also affect tourists travelling closer to home. A woman from mainland China who in February had her son relieve himself in a bottle in a crowded Hong Kong restaurant sparked an outpouring of anger online, with some locals deriding mainlanders as "locusts".

The handbook, published to coincide with a week-long public holiday that started on October 1, has been met with a mixed response.