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Censorship Government It's funny.  Laugh. News

Chinese Subvert Censorship With a Popular Pun 272

Anonymusing writes "In spoken Chinese, 'grass-mud horse' sounds virtually identical to an obscenity (hint: it begins with "mother-") — and as a cartoon character, it has become an amazing phenomenon. Meant as a subversive attack on censors, the alpaca-like mythical creature has led to a cuddly stuffed animal — selling over 180,000 in a few weeks — and a wildly popular YouTube video with children's voices singing words that are either completely benign or incredibly offensive, depending on how you listen." Update: 03/13 09:29 GMT by T : Since this story was set up, the originally linked video seems to have been pulled. Searching YouTube reveals that there are some alternatives available, at least for now.
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Chinese Subvert Censorship With a Popular Pun

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 13, 2009 @04:27AM (#27178507)

    Watch the cnut moderators censor this fscking post for all the shirty language it contains!

    Hey, mods: kiss my RSS!

  • Chinese puns (Score:4, Informative)

    by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @04:35AM (#27178543) Homepage
    Despite the bewildering complexity and variety of Chinese characters, there are actually a very limited set of ways to pronounce them. This results in tons and tons of words sounding exactly the same, and the only way to know them apart is by context. It's a real downer for learning the language when you see two native speakers misunderstanding each other. It is also a gold mine for puns, like the story says. Different characters from motherfucker, but sounds the same. Since the internet is not spoken, then technically it's not offensive.

    I would be careful reading any subversive meaning into this - they're just tweaking the noses of the net.cops. Most Chinese people think that the government does a good job keeping society clean. To them, unrestricted freedom means chaos, and China certainly has lots of experience with chaos ruining their country. I mean, the 1949 takover by radical lefists was considered an improvement, and they killed 60,000,000 of their own countrymen.

    • by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @04:45AM (#27178599) Homepage Journal
      Yes its like that in Cantonese as well. I gave up trying to learn my wife's language when I found out that the words for Aunt and Vagina sound exactly the same to me.
      • I wonder how easy it is to lip-read cantonese.

        If you know the language, you don't have to be a ventriloquist to _easily_ say a lot of words without moving your lips.

        And the exact same lip movement but different tone = totally different meaning.

        There's a bit more movement with mandarin but it's not much easier ;).
        • Tone is very important and I don't know if you can read that from lips. OTH Cantonese speakers who I know use a lot of gestures so that may make them easier to read.
      • I understand completely. I gave up trying to learn my wife's native Balkan tongue when I learned there's a word that can mean "work" or "play".

        But now that I think about it, I can say that my radio works or my radio plays and have it mean approximately the same thing. You know, PhD aside, I hate fucking English.

        Ni tute parolus Esperanton

        • Oh, come on, it's great for messing with peoples heads.

          Though, for me, German is more fun to speak. It's insane, but in a good way.

          Guten tag, haben sie ein Berliner?

          • Damnit, and hard to type. But, there's an example of a word that can have multiple meanings (and in this case, only distinguished by a capitalization and context.

            that should be

            "haben Sie".

            Sie = you, respectful
            sie = she

            "Do you have a jelly donut", not "does she have a jelly donut"

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by pluther ( 647209 )

            Guten tag, haben sie ein Berliner?

            Ich bin ein berliner, you insensitive clod!

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jgtg32a ( 1173373 )
        My Girlfriend actually speaks Cantonese as well.
        The Words for Bread and Full also sound almost identical.

        And I've more or less given up on learning Cantonese as well but she hasn't given up on teaching me and drops words into our conversations.

        I get to tease her back because there are some sounds that she can't tell apart, it may have something to do with the tonal nature of the language she listens for the tone and not the sound. So I get to tease her by switching words that I know she can't tell apar
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Emb3rz ( 1210286 )

          If those words happen to be the same as they are in mandarin (both sounding like bow and transliterated to 'bao' with different accents) then yes, tonal differences aside, the words are pronounced the same.

          The differences, if I remember correctly (and, again, if they're the same in cantonese as they are in mandarin), is that the 'bread' bao is said with a 'falling' tone, so it sounds like you shout! the 'b' sound and the 'ao' comes out in a lower tone. On the other hand, the 'full' bao is said with a 'falli

        • Re:Chinese puns (Score:4, Informative)

          by HungWeiLo ( 250320 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @09:54AM (#27180607)

          In the case of "bread" and "full", the Cantonese pronunciation is about the same as Mandarin. They're both "bao", but have distinct intonations that should be pretty obvious.

          Mandarin's much easier to learn, as it only has 4 distinct tones, whereas Cantonese has something like 9 or 13. The southern Chinese dialects pretty much require you to go "native" to learn it with the proper intonations.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by TheoMurpse ( 729043 )

          A cursory viewing of Cantonese phonetics [wikipedia.org] reveals that the near-open front unrounded vowel [wikipedia.org] (the "a" in "cat") doesn't exist. The open-mid front unrounded vowel [wikipedia.org] (the "e" in "bed") does exist in Cantonese.

          The reason she doesn't hear a difference is because the difference between the "a" and "e" in those two words is slight at best. The vowel height and vowel backness are nearly identical. The fact that she doesn't have the habituation to hear the difference between them is because her native language doesn't h

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Lew Perin ( 30124 )

        Mandarin (which is the official nation-wide dialect) is much more phonetically impoverished than Cantonese: fewer tones, fewer consonants. So if there's a more lucrative language for punsters anywhere in the world than Mandarin, I'd be surprised.

      • by sorak ( 246725 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @10:17AM (#27180987)

        Yes its like that in Cantonese as well. I gave up trying to learn my wife's language when I found out that the words for Aunt and Vagina sound exactly the same to me.

        Oh. So that's why the Cantonese woman was wanting me to pay $100 to meet her aunt...

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by steelfood ( 895457 )

        Every dialect has its own set of puns, and interchangability between dialects varies with the pun. And on top of that, Cantonese, in particular, the Hong Kong version, has a completely different set of colloquialisms.

        For example, this pun doesn't work with Cantonese. There aren't just more tones in Cantonese, but more beginning and ending consonants. In Cantonese, the phrase in question sounds like "Cho Nai Ma" while "fuck your mother" is "Cou Nay Ma."

        Besides, the Cantonese slang for "fuck" doesn't actually

    • Re:Chinese puns (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Suhas ( 232056 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @05:43AM (#27178821)

      Despite the bewildering complexity and variety of Chinese characters, there are actually a very limited set of ways to pronounce them.

      Actually it is the other way around in terms of cause and effect. The Chinese Script (Kanji) evolved because there are very few phonetic variations in the spoken language and they needed a way to make sure that you can mean different things even if essentially the same sounds are coming out of your mouth. Ditto for Japanese as well. The phonetic range is severely limited compared to say English or Sanskrit. You may find this [pinyin.info] interesting

      • Umm, Kanji is a Japanese word that means "chinese characters" Chinese people don't understand the word "kanji" because it's a Japanese word.

        Japanese was originally a spoken-only language and then the higher ups decided to import a writing system in and, low and behold, the closest system was the Chinese system.

        However, depending on the region of Japan, the time of importation, and the original Japanese word that it went with, most kanji have 2 readings if not more (the most I can think of for one off the
        • I can't bother to RTFA so I sure as hell can't be bothered to read your link, but I have to say that Chinese characters didn't evolve phonetically, but were actual representations (ie drawings) of the word they represent (more complex ideas being made up of combinations of simpler concepts). But as a speaker of Japanese, not Chinese, I only know the history of the characters in Japan, which is not the country of origin.

          To the best of my knowledge, this theory is widely discredited today. DeFrancis' book "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy" is a good read, there is a relevant excerpt online [pinyin.info]

          Over 90% of all Chinese characters have a strong phonetic component in it. Only a tiny number of characters are either true pictographs or a combination of true pictographs. The characters originally developed from pictograms, but soon they were used as a sort of rebus, where pictographs were substituted to represent words that sound

    • Re:Chinese puns (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jandersen ( 462034 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @06:01AM (#27178911)

      This results in tons and tons of words sounding exactly the same, and the only way to know them apart is by context.

      It is, however, not as bad as you make it sound; the "context" is very often that certain meanings are expressed by certain combinations of words. The main reason why we think of Chinese as very confusing, I think, is that we associate 1 character with 1 word - which was the way it worked originally, but it would be more accurate to say that each character is a "mono-syllabic meme" which can occasionaly stand on its own, but more often is combined to form polysyllabic words. In this sense Chinese is actually not that dissimilar to most other languages.

      Thus you have "qiche" (two characters) meaning "car" or "to ride a bicycle" - the ambiguity being an artifact of my inability to conveniently represent the tones of the language. Traditionally the "qi" part of it means "steam" and "che" means vehicle, so "qi" is still used in many combinations that are associated with steam and "che" is used as part of most vehicles.

      • I like "gonggongqichi" (bus). Just saying that word makes me laugh. "Oat" cracks me up too, but that's English.

        I didn't know qi was steam though ( I only know a VERY little Chinese ) I guess that's how some people still call a refrigerator an Icebox even though there' no cube of ice at the top that must be replaced these days. Although Icebox is waning.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      I would be careful reading any subversive meaning into this - they're just tweaking the noses of the net.cops.

      Which is illegal where they live, and thus subversive of the system of censorship and control.

      Just because people usually are not punished for this kind of thing doesn't make doing it any less brave when people have been and will be forced into slave labor for less.

      • Which is illegal where they live, and thus subversive of the system of censorship and control.

        Just because people usually are not punished for this kind of thing doesn't make doing it any less brave when people have been and will be forced into slave labor for less.


        What's brave about this? If I kicked your door in and ran into your living room and screamed motherfucker in your face, that's illegal, and thus dangerous. Does that make it subversive and brave? Or just anti-social and stupid?
        • Or just anti-social and stupid?

          And if it were the latter, how could I tell it apart from your comment?

        • by h4rm0ny ( 722443 )

          If I kicked your door in and ran into your living room and screamed motherfucker in your face, that's illegal, and thus dangerous. Does that make it subversive and brave? Or just anti-social and stupid?

          If you kick in my door? Definitely stupid. I'm not in a position of authority over you so there's no power to subvert. If everyone does it at the government offices, then that's subversive because they claim authority over you and there is power to subvert. Though I'm not part of the culture and am working o

          • If you kick in my door? Definitely stupid. I'm not in a position of authority over you so there's no power to subvert.

            If you're not in a position of authority, why did you lock the door? Who told you you had the right to have a quiet uninterrupted evening without having offensive crap shoved in your face? I didn't... and I have the right to say any damned thing I want, any place I want. This is my freedom we're talking about, right?
            • Re:Chinese puns (Score:4, Interesting)

              by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday March 13, 2009 @08:42AM (#27179893) Homepage Journal

              This is my freedom we're talking about, right?

              Wow. I mean, just, wow. What we're talking about here is subversion of censorship [slashdot.org] in a tool of government manipulation of information. Per the above-linked (informative) comment, This was seen as a punch in Baidu's face, and by extension, a joke on government's attempts to control online speech. Perhaps you failed to RTFA (shock amazement) and so missed this part of the article: "The resilient and intelligent caonima fight back to defeat the river crabs - yet another play on words. The pronunciation of river crab resembles "harmony" - a favourite slogan of the current Communist Party leadership. It has become common practice among internet writers whose posts have been deleted to say they have been "harmonised" - or "eaten by the river crab". Thus "river crab" has become a code name for internet censors." So in fact the entire battle is over censorship, it is not just a big jerkoff wankfest, and I do not believe that it is a false dichotomy to say that you either can see how this is relevant and in fact positive, or you do not understand the value of the freedom of speech. Perhaps you should read up on Parody [wikipedia.org] and Satire [wikipedia.org] so that you can better understand the concept. He who laughs, lasts. He who laughs last usually didn't get the joke.

              • I think the value of freedom of speech is that you have the chance to speak. As in, you haven't been shut up before the words got out of your mouth. But that doesn't mean that you can say anything you like. You should be judged on what you say after you've been given the chance to say it, and if you're causing harm without causing benefit and refuse to stop, then you should be reprimanded.

                Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand. I'd even go so far as to say that freedom is the ability to take respo
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by mdwh2 ( 535323 )

        I entirely agree. It's also interesting to see that China has laws on these kinds of things, and not just political censorship.

        When discussing censorship laws in western countries - anything from banning violent movies or computer games, to recent laws in the UK criminalising possession of images of consensual adult sexuality that the Government disapproves of, a tired argument in support of the laws is "Oh noes, how dare you protest against such things, and call this censorship! Don't you know in China the

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Despite the bewildering complexity and variety of Chinese characters, there are actually a very limited set of ways to pronounce them. This results in tons and tons of words sounding exactly the same, and the only way to know them apart is by context. It's a real downer for learning the language when you see two native speakers misunderstanding each other. It is also a gold mine for puns, like the story says. Different characters from motherfucker, but sounds the same. Since the internet is not spoken, then technically it's not offensive.

      There are about 1200 ways to pronounce a syllable in modern Mandarin, and about 1800 in modern Cantonese. Compare this to the 8000 of English and around 100 in Japanese, and you'll find that Chinese is not that poor phonetically (see DeFrancis: "The Chinese Language" for more details). Furthermore, most words in modern Chinese are composed of several characters. The number of different characters that sound exactly the same is huge, but the number of actual words that sound exactly the same is actually very

    • It wasn't an improvement for my family, ni gun ni de ma.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by julesh ( 229690 )

      Despite the bewildering complexity and variety of Chinese characters, there are actually a very limited set of ways to pronounce them. This results in tons and tons of words sounding exactly the same, and the only way to know them apart is by context.

      This is both a pain and a godsend for foreign companies establishing products in China. Despite persistent rumours, the (official) Chinese translation of Coca Cola is not "bite the wax tadpole", but "makes pleasure in the mouth". The two phrases sound almost

  • by joe545 ( 871599 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @04:36AM (#27178549)
    I find it fittingly ironic that in a story about the nefarious Chinese censorship that the slashdot editors felt it okay to censor the expletive in question.
  • by ZeroExistenZ ( 721849 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @04:39AM (#27178569)

    I ended up doing this to phonetically construct sentences to pass a filter at someone's job, as you cannot write about less by Anns without it triggering it. And if you have friends who are less by ann, that might be a problem if you decide to write about it.

    I hope this doesn't inspire spammers though; Just imagine an inbox with Jew cheese hot who men taking a hot low duh! Now with 5 extra inches of pie Nile mask joule in men lay Ness. With slew tea nurses.

    • Just imagine an inbox with Jew cheese hot who men taking a hot low duh! Now with 5 extra inches of pie Nile mask joule in men lay Ness. With slew tea nurses.

      I guess that this is a decent english attempt at the techniques used to evade Chinese censors, but to me it just looks like someone barfed up a bunch of vanity plates.

      • but to me it just looks like someone barfed up a bunch of vanity plates.

        It might look to you as anything you (want to) interprete what you see :)
        The communication isn't an "attempt at the techniques..." but it is a copy/paste from what I've been using in my emails to a friend to evade internal vodacom spamfilters and for personal fun, which was received well in the creative evading...

        In communication it doesn't matter how communication looks like, but wherever it's received. (both in virtually/physically "a

    • by Gramie2 ( 411713 )

      You piece me off, you far can jerk

      (as I recall, the name of a song (album?) by some band that came to my university in the early 80s)

  • by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @04:41AM (#27178577) Homepage

    mother-in-law?

  • hahahaah (Score:3, Informative)

    by unity100 ( 970058 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @04:44AM (#27178597) Homepage Journal

    that was one crazy fucked up video. here, this one has translation :

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKx1aenJK08 [youtube.com]

    i think that even would be on the borderline in u.s.... for the censor people in it probably sounds like someone's fucking their brain from the inside.

  • by unity100 ( 970058 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @04:47AM (#27178603) Homepage Journal

    and upload it to every video site ! we can show those censors what the power of internet is, and they wouldnt have any chinese to prosecute in the end. result : total brain damage.

  • by xizhi.zhu ( 1499631 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @04:49AM (#27178613) Homepage
    more background is still needed :D besides the "grass-mud horse", another animal, "river crab" is also popular in China now, which is the enemy of the "horse". in Chinese, "river crab" sounds like "harmony", which is what the Chinese government use as an excuse to shut down websites they don't like.
    • by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @05:00AM (#27178657)

      What's the difference?

      We call it here as "Intellectual Property dispute", "DMCA Violation", "Child Porn", "Meth Making Instructions", or other undesirable works.

      In Utah, possession of even a single picture considered to be child porn is 10 years. So, why pretend that Censorship doesnt exist here? It does, just under other names.

      • by dapyx ( 665882 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @06:08AM (#27178949) Homepage
        Well, in most of continental Europe, claiming that "The Holocaust didn't happen" will land you in jail for a few years, too.
        • Well, in most of continental Europe, claiming that "The Holocaust didn't happen" will land you in jail for a few years, too.

          In much of China, claiming that "a student stood up to the government at Tianenmen square" (sp?) will land you in jail for a few years, too.

          (I understand that many people regularly flout the censorship standards and nothing happens to them. Yet...)

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          True, but the countries that comprise Europe dont pretend to have eliminated censorship. They know all too well what happens if you forget or try to rewrite history. Which is why it's illegal to glorify or deny the various denizens of WW2.

          In the USA, we have this thing called the Bill of Rights, which prevents the govt from silencing us. Instead, we let our companies and "think of the children" laws do that for us.

          Same effect. The Europeans are just really clear what they dont tolerate, and I cant say I bla

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mdwh2 ( 535323 )

        Perhaps - one point of view is that all forms of censorship are wrong.

        Another reasonable point of view is that banning something is justified if there is overwhelming evidence of harm. So one might make that argument if child pr0n - but not with "This image/word/etc is disgusting!" One could also make that argument with defamation (where it's shown that the false claims have harmed someone in some way).

        Also note that copyright laws are less broad in that they don't ban all forms of an image, just that parti

      • pretty much all the same you point out above is illegal in china. and then you get additional limitations: the worst being, no political free speech. this grass-mud horse revolt started because china was instituting a major crackdown on pornography. and then used that crackdown as a cover to shut down a number of pro-democracy sites, like charter 08

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_08 [wikipedia.org]

        The Chinese government has said little publicly on the Charter.[8] On 8 December 2008, two days before the 60th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Liu Xiaobo was detained by police. His detention came hours before the online release of the Charter.[9] He has been retained at an undisclosed location, though he has been allowed to meet his wife on one occasion.[10] [11] Several Nobel Laureates have written a letter to President Hu Jintao asking for his release.[8] In reponse, the Chinese government is trying to crush[10] the dissidents: at least 70 of its 303 original signatories have been summoned or interrogated by police while domestic media have been forbidden to interview anyone who has signed the document.[10] Police have also searched for or questioned a journalist, Li Datong, and two lawyers, though none have been arrested.[8] State media has been banned from reporting on the manifesto.[12] A blogging website popular with activists, bullog.cn, has been shut down which may have had ties to the Charter.[13]

        can you see that happening in the west? i'm talking prison JUST FOR SAYING YOU WANT POLITICAL CHANGE. people like you really bother me because you have no perception of scale, and you see a little censorship in the west, and therefore you find that a draconian harsh censorship practice elsewhere is the same thing. utter pure 100% bullshit. your point of view is logically incoherent, ignorant, and plain wrong. no, china and the usa aren't even in the same league. your comparison is utter busllshit

        for example: you can't criticize the leaders in china. that will get you tracked and possibly arrested. but here in the west, i can call barack obama anything i want, and no one is going to arrest me. go ahead and try to say the kind of things you can freely say about barack obama in the west, and compare that with what you can get away with criticizing the leadership of china, or iran

        that ACTUALLY MAKES A DIFFERENCE AND MEANS A LOT. the censorship in the west is nothing like that in china or iran, and that it is perfectly appropriate, acceptable, and logically coherent to criticize the draconian censorship in china or iran while at the same time celebrating the free speech in the west

        the absurdity is that you wish to propose that SOME censorship, regardless of quantity, is the issue, rather than the RELATIVE amounts of censorship

        look: in every society that ever existed, for all time, going in the past, and going to all of the future of mankind, there will be SOME rules about not being able to say something. so that means we can't criticize and compare the RELAITVE freedoms of one society to the next?

        you really believe that?

        your entire point of view on the issue is complete bullshit. you compare societies on the SCALE of their censorship, and then you arrive at a coherent and 100% factually true observation: that you have a lot more freedom of expression on the west. and that MEANS something. ESPECIALLY in regard to politics

        you will NEVER have ABSOLUTE freedom of expression in ANY society, forever. and because there might be a few limits here and there in one society you honestly want to say that that society with few limitations on free speech is equivalent to one with draconian and severe limits on expression?

        really? you think that's a valid and coherent belief on your part?

        you're reasoning abilities have been found to have fallen short

    • Yeah, it says that clear as day in TFA.
  • Censorship (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jopet ( 538074 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @05:15AM (#27178713) Journal

    Of course no one would censor "motherfucker" or "fuck your mother" in the west on a website or in public television. Must be pure chance that everytime somebody says "cock" or "fuck" on TV in the US there is a beep sound.

    • Actually... There was a time when UPN owned a local channel.

      On Sundays they played the violent action movie of years ago, like Rambo and others. Turns out, the censors were on their lunch break... the whole day. Still had commercials though. Absolutely nothing was beeped. And it was from noon to 8PM. Good shows.

    • Of course no one would censor "motherfucker" or "fuck your mother" in the west on a website or in public television. Must be pure chance that everytime somebody says "cock" or "fuck" on TV in the US there is a beep sound.

      Fun anecdote: a vermont PBS station aired the movie Slapshot during one of their "give us moneyz!" marathons one magical saturday night.
      Now, that's an old low-budget movie about a prom-am hockey team, nothing special except in Quebec, where the "french" dub is a classic that the locals force every immigrant to watch.

      Now, the thing about that is that about one in every 3 words in the original version is "fuck", and at their first begging-break, it became apparent that no one at the station had bothered to ac

    • by cyfer2000 ( 548592 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @09:10AM (#27180139) Journal
      And the beep sound is exactly the same pronunciation of vagina in Chinese.
  • Is this offensive to Chinese?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8WLIVCrRuY [youtube.com]

    (Monty Python's 'I Like Chinese')

    Maybe I'm racist and don't know it, I thought Balls of Fury was funny.
  • by roelbj ( 95481 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @05:40AM (#27178811) Homepage

    That is Sofa King Awesome!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      Sofa King Awesome

      In my mind, there's nothing at all awesome about Tom Cruise...

      • Given the tack this site (appropriately) has on Scientology, why did

        In my mind, there's nothing at all awesome about Tom Cruise...

        receive Funny+mods rather than +insightful?

  • Chinese puns (Score:3, Informative)

    by FRiC ( 416091 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @05:41AM (#27178817) Homepage

    The youtube videos may be new to most people (and they're not new), but the grass-mud-horse and other Chinese puns are nothing new. I've heard them since I was a kid. (This is like why Canon's camera went from G7 to G9.)

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by JianTian13 ( 525365 )

      I just thought about that -- A camera named "penis"? That'd be just too awesome :)

      Wonder what they call it when there's a summit of the leaders of the eight largest economies?

  • ..Sofa King We Tod Did.

  • by ciderVisor ( 1318765 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @05:44AM (#27178833)

    To allow the mouth to be able to rejoice !

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @05:53AM (#27178877)

    I mean, George Carlin has been doing things like this ages before I was born. Like the "you may prick your finger but doooon't finger your prick" bit. Not to mention the ancient song about the rooster, the donkey, the dog and the cat.

    Well, maybe the difference is that those words don't just sound "bad". They are. But it depends on the context, and when you insist that you use them in a benign context, it's funny because you can "cheat" the censors. Can't censor that, I was just singing about a rooster, a donkey... whyyyyy, what did YOU think? Is it me that's naughty or is it your thoughts?

    I think that's what any of those songs are about. They should show you that you, and only you, are "naughty" here if you consider this naughty.

    Maybe we can learn a bit about who's the pervert from the Chinese. The one that (maybe even actually innocently) sings a tune, or the one that wants to hear something naughty in it.

  • some backgounds (Score:5, Informative)

    by gzipped_tar ( 1151931 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @05:55AM (#27178887) Journal

    As a Chinese, lemme explain some background..

    The "grass-mud-horse" thingy used to appear in the Baidu Baike, Baidu's Wikipedia-like project. The Baidu Baike is widely regarded as part of government's effort to control Chinese people's source of information and a central hub of the whole "harmonization" stupidity, for Baidu is at the same side with the govn't. By creating a new webopedia it gives them more control over it. Naturally the contents in Baidu Baike are heavily censored against politically incorrect material but no one gives a shit about factual accuracy or copyright violations that's rampant there.

    Some anonymous person thus put the articles for "grass-mud-horse", along with other jokes of this kind, to Baidu Baike. Unsurprisingly they stayed there for quite a long time without being removed, because there was no "political" stuff in them, even if the contents were outrageously out of touch with reality. This was seen as a punch in Baidu's face, and by extension, a joke on government's attempts to control online speech. After the "grass-mud-horse" became widely known the Baidu Baike articles were removed but the meme went wild.

    So much for the background. I hope I made some points across the Great Language Barrier.. It's kinda surprising to see you guys here discussing the caonima stuff at /. ;)

  • Ok, I am interested in one aspect of the story and after reading the articles and doing some searching I still cannot find the answer.
    What is a "grass mud horse" and have some pictures of a real one? The dolls look more like a lamma, and if that is what they are how did that name come about?
  • I didn't hear it in the one video I listened to.

  • Wow, the "cuddly stuffed animal version" is very appealing. Does anyone know where I can get one of these? I feel that I must have one for my desk.

  • It's Mother-pus-bucket [moviequotes.com], of course.
  • They even copy Briney Spears.
  • Something the author of the first post seems to not have understand, is that "grass" and "fuck" is spelled the same way (eg: cao in pinying) but said with a different accent (the falling one means fuck). Same goes with "ma" that can mean mother or horse. I am really not sure about "mud" because I don't know what chinese word we are talking about here, but maybe someone can explain ?
  • by weeeeed ( 675324 ) on Friday March 13, 2009 @09:04AM (#27180101) Journal

    So what's up with Youtube censoring that ..censorship subverted with a popular pun... video all the time?

    China has it's firewall, we have big corporations doing the censorship... i'm not sure what's better.

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