Or, what if the recipient not only did not come but had not been notified that he had won?...
Well, it really didn't go all that well:
It was heralded as a Chinese rival to the Nobel peace prize, a riposte to the honouring of jailed dissident Liu Xiabo that has infuriated Beijing.
But the first Confucius peace prize had a rocky launch today. The first winner did not appear for the award ceremony, and only learned of his victory from reports in the media.
Instead, a bewildered young girl described by organisers as an "angel of peace" collected the 100,000-yuan (£9,500) cash prize awarded to a former Taiwanese vice-president for his work in improving relations with mainland China.
Lien Chan beat five other nominees, including past Nobel peace prize winners Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter, to win an award the organisers claimed had a longer history than the Nobel. But there was no sign of him at the chaotic and hastily convened press-conference-cum-ceremony. Reporters crammed into the meeting room in a Beijing hotel asked whether the organisers had even spoken to Lien's office. There was no direct reply.
As of this writing, there has been no statement from Lien Chan that he has even accepted the award. A bit awkward, that.
And, predictably, parody has already raced in to save the day (tap tip: Peking Duck):
Mr. Lien Chan does not come off all that well there...
For a well crafted news story, this piece by Melissa Chan at Al Jezzera is good:
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