Saving face

Early October is Nobel Prize announcement week. It is often an agonizing and even humiliating period for some Chinese who see the prize as the yardstick of our nation's scientific and educational development.

When the occasional overseas Chinese person wins the prize, it somehow accentuates the pain, as it appears to show the Chinese as a race are capable of the highest achievements in science, but we are somehow handicapped by something else, say, our system.

This obsession with the world's best-known awards reflects both our aspirations about being part of the world club and a deep-rooted insecurity about self-worth. We want to be recognized and what could be better than a world-renowned prize?