BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Beijing Opera master Mei Baojiu has called for "cleaning up TV screens and cracking down on vulgar reality shows."

　　Mei, a member of the Tenth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country's top advisory body, said he, with other artists, will submit a proposal on regulating reality shows that are booming in China.

　　The CPPCC National Committee will start its 12-day session in the Great Hall of the People in downtown Beijing on March 3.

　　Mei, 72, harshly lambasted many low-quality, low-brow reality programs nationwide, in which some participants parodying Beijing Opera.

　　Beijing Opera is taken as one of China's most important traditional theater genre and has been proclaimed an intangible cultural heritage enjoying state-level protection.

　　Last year on China Central Television's program "Inspiring China", a male competitor played a funny role on stage by wearing a bra and imitating a female character type in Beijing Opera.

　　"The clumsy imitation sheerly runs counter to the art and greatly harms the integrity of Beijing Opera," said Mei. His father Mei Lanfang, late Beijing Opera performer, was one of the country's most respected artists in the 20th century.

　　Following Hunan TV Station's successful "Super Voice Girls" based on "American Idol", Chinese TV stations have come up with more than 500 such programs in less than three years.

　　"There are too many reality shows, some of which are too chaotic and too vulgar," said Wang Taihua, director of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), earlier thisyear.

　　"The government must strengthen supervision over entertainment programs, restrict the number of TV reality shows and upgrade their quality," said Wang, adding they plans to provide program design guidelines and carry out real-time monitoring to "curb the trend of pursuing higher audience ratings by catering to public sensationalism."