A good mate of mine, a local laddie who hates this place even more than I do, once said to me: “Do you know why we say Confucius? Because he very confuse us!”

Yeah, well, by Chinese standards that was very funny and probably qualifies as Joke of the Year. And, like all great comedy (and trust me on this one, that really was great comedy. It had them rolling in the aisles in Hefei) it contains more than an ounce of truth.

I reckon anyone who says “Man go through airport security sideways going to Bangkok” must know what he’s on about.

But he was a funny old geezer, that Confucius. Mad as a hatter, of course, and like all great Chinese in history, as bent as a nine bob note. He wore a dress, did you know that? And kept a small stable of young boys for his, ahem, entertainment. And he was forever going around saying things like “Man with one chopstick go hungry”. No one understood him then, and no one understands him now.

Despite this, however, Confucius apparently did understand his fellow Chinese rather well, as illustrated by this wee gem: “If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame”. “An oppressive government is more feared than a tiger” is another tasty morsel at his feast of wisdom.

I think Confucius would have understood all too well the morals and motivations of China’s present ruling dynasty, but I’m not entirely certain that he would have approved of his name being associated with a world-wide spy network, or a charlatan ‘prize’. That said, he would without any doubt have laughed his ass off at the clowns who handed out that prize last night…

The so-called ‘Confucius Peace Prize’ was created by the mandarins in Peking last week in order to show the world that people from Norway are bad. Or something along those lines; it never was terribly clear what the award was actually for, which is just one more reason why my friend’s joke is so apt. Something about the Chinese viewpoint of peace, I think, which means putting people in prison if they look at you funny.

The nominees were: the 11th Panchen Lama (selected by Peking after the real 11th Panchen Lama was made to disappear), a Chinese poet no one has ever heard of before (but who conveniently holds a post at the Ministry of Culture), and six ‘international figures’ who were not actually named. But the winner, who was selected after a nationwide online poll that organisers later admitted didn’t take place, was former Taiwanese vice-president Lien Chan. Chan wasn’t there to receive the prize, because he “was unaware he had been chosen or even that there was such a prize named after the famed Chinese sage”, according to his office. And so, his prize was given instead to a six-year-old girl. No one knows anything about her, except that she is the daughter of one of the committee members, and he is now taking care of the RMB$100,000 prize money for her. Questioned by reporters as to the nominee selection process, the committee chairman replied it was “a very long and complicated process. We can discuss this in the future”. He then departed hastily.

Chinese authorities have denied that this award is in any way linked to the highly respected Nobel Peace Prize, awarded this year to Liu Xiaobo for his two decades of non-violent struggle for human rights, saying “Norway is only a small country with scarce land area and population … it must be in the minority in terms of other relatively large numbers concerning the conception of freedom and democracy”. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Jiang Yu said: “those people at the Nobel committee have to admit they are in the minority. The Chinese people and the overwhelming majority of people in the world oppose what they do.”

Confucius would have loved it. And the Nobel Committee will have the last laugh of all.

But nobody goes away empty handed at MyLaowai (the internally-renowned and very-famous-in-the-world award-winning scholarly resource). And so I dedicate this Falling Cow Award to the assclowns in Peking who seem to think the rest of us are all too stupid to see them for the yellow-tailed bamboo monkeys that they are. China, the joke’s on you.

And my deepest respects to Liu Xiaobo and the thousands of other genuine peace activists who are now either under house arrest or are languishing in Chinese prisons. Because if this country is to have any future at all, it lies with them and not with the thugs and criminals who are currently in charge.

When called an idiot sometimes is better to be quiet than to open mouth and remove all doubt.