A restaurant in south-west China has been fined for offering to serve sushi on the bodies of nearly-naked women, according to media reports.

The Yamato Wind Village restaurant in Kunming city attempted to launch its "body sushi" dinner earlier this month, provoking lively local debate.

But health authorities banned it before the dinner could even take place.

Now the restaurant has also been fined 2,000 Yuan (US$240), according to the Beijing Daily Messenger newspaper.

The management of the restaurant told China's official Xinhua news agency that the "body sushi" service was launched to introduce a special Japanese food culture to Chinese people.

The practise of eating sushi off naked or nearly-naked women has long been popular with a certain clientele in Japan.

But the authorities in China said the restaurant's actions violated women's rights, as well as laws on advertising [!?] and food sanitation.

They also said the women used to display the sushi were not suitably dressed for restaurant employees.

When confronted with advertisements for the sushi dinner, the people of Kunming seemed equally undecided.

Some "were indignant, claiming it is humiliating to women," the official China Daily newspaper reported at the time.

"But others were curious and tempted to have a try," it added.