爱面子_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

爱面子

To illustrate their household fame, one need only take a look at Chen Ning Yang, who shared the Nobel in physics with Lee in 1957. When Yang, 82, announced his engagement to 28-year-old Weng Fan a few years ago, it made banner headlines across the nation.

Granted, later additions to the Chinese-American pantheon of Nobel winners have received much less media coverage. Ask most Beijingers about Steven Chu and they probably do not know he has become the US secretary of energy. When Charles Kao was made one of the three winners of this year's Nobel Prize in physics, the news was greeted with muted applause. In an online survey at Huanqiu's website, 73 percent of some 6,000 respondents said they did not feel "a sense of glory" about an overseas Chinese winning the prize.

Does that mean we do not care for the Nobel? No. In the same survey, 80 percent "looked forward to a Chinese scientist winning" and 59 percent believe one will "in the near future".

Chen Ning Yang has predicted that Chinese scientists, meaning Chinese inside China, will bring home the coveted trophy within 20 years. Yang has always been bullish about China's education. In numerous speeches he has extolled the virtues of emphasizing basic math skills and adds schools in China do much better at this than the US.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman also wrote glowingly about our education system but there has been a chorus of disapproval here - to the point that someone fabricated the news that an ex-president of Yale University lambasted it from the US perspective. It was so harsh and spot-on it could have been only from an insider.