An alpaca is generally reckoned to be the closest analogue of China's mythical 'grass mud horse'.
Forgive me, fellow China hands - I know this is getting to be a bit of a stale story for us by now, but our friends overseas may still be missing out (unless they read the New York Times article on it a couple of weeks ago). I had been meaning to write about this for a month or so now, and may have left it a bit too late. Oh well.
Chinese Netizens, you see, can be a fractious bunch, and are much given to abusing each other in colourful terms. From time to time, the government launches a moral crackdown on this free-and-easy obscenity. But the online community is endlessly inventive in finding ways to circumvent such censorship. In fact, it's not so very hard, because the Chinese language has such a huge number of homophones that generating dirty puns often seems more like an unavoidable accident than a creative challenge.
At the beginning of this year, in response to an attempt to filter and block comments including the favourite expression of abuse 操你妈 (cao ni ma - "F**k your mum!"), one Chinese forum created the alternate phrase 草泥马 (same pronunciation - though different tones, I think - but the nonsense meaning "grass mud horse").
Before long, it had spread all over the Internet and beyond. For 8 or 10 weeks, it has been one of the biggest pop culture phenomena in China. Elaborate stories were developed about this non-existent creature: its habitat in the Malegebi Desert (I won't tell you; you can guess; or consult the ChinaSmack glossary of online slang) was said to be under threat from the incursions of 'river crabs' (this, 河蟹, is a near-homophone for 'harmonious', Hu Jintao's favourite political buzzword, now co-opted by the country's Netizens as a synonym for censorship - "Oh no, I've been harmonized!" meaning that someone's comments, or a whole blog, have been deleted).
The humble 'grass mud horse' has spawned numerous cartoons, and even a song (which I had been hoping to embed, but....) which was one of the funniest things I've seen on the Internet in a long, long time: cute pictures of llamas and alpacas accompanied by what appears to be a children's nonsense song - but is in fact an absolutely filthy lexicon of contemporary Chinese profanity. There were dozens of variations of this starting to appear on YouTube.... until a few days ago. Now, they've all been pulled. Boo!
I wonder if that NYT article is responsible. The Chinese government was probably getting a bit hacked off with this joke anyway, but when it starts gathering "unfavourable" publicity overseas, then it's definitely time to act. I gather the Kafka Boys are trying to sweep the Internet clear of the offending phrase (I hope I don't get myself blocked again!). We'll just have to come up with something else.
2 comments:
how about the Nightly Vicuna?
Yes, we have been suffering a vicuna lacuna, haven't we?
I will do my best to make amends.
I hope you weren't thinking of something naughtier.
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