Like it is

A lot of the Chinese commentary online about Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Prize has been more considered and more sensitive than that of the offensive fengqing dingbats (like the one who showed up here on Saturday) who are unfortunately so prevalent on the English-language 'China blogs' and thus tend to give a rather distorted impression of 'typical' Chinese opinion.

One of my favourite remarks was this, an elegant little parable posted by Chongtou Yip on Sina.com, China's leading Web portal (via Global Voices Online; the original comment on Sina already seems to have been removed!):

从前有一位蛮不讲理、暴力的父亲，因为儿子不听话，所以把他毒打及关在房间內。可是，学校老师同学都表扬他，邻里都赞许他，这位父亲能不看到自己的过失吗？

Once upon a time, there was a very violent and unreasonable father who beat his son and locked him up in a room. However, at school all the teachers and students praised the son. All the neighbours also praised the son. How can the father not see his own fault?

Quite so.  The Nobel Committee is an extremely smart group of people.  It might be time for the Chinese government - and the Chinese people (especially the fenqing dingbats) - to start considering that maybe they have been wrong, and the Nobel Committee (and, ahem, pretty much the whole of the rest of the world) is right.