Grass Mud Horse
Encyclopedia
The Grass Mud Horse or Cao Ní Ma is a Chinese Internet meme widely used as a form of symbolic defiance of the widespread Internet censorship in China
. It is a play on the Mandarin language words "fuck your mother", and one of the so-called 10 mythical creatures created in a hoax article on Baidu Baike
in early 2009 whose names form obscene puns. It has become an Internet chat forum cult phenomenon in China through chat forums and has garnered world-wide press attention, with videos, cartoons and merchandise of the animal, which supposedly resembles the alpaca
, having appeared.
. The name is derived from a profanity , which translates to "Fuck your mother" (See also: "Motherfucker
" and "Mother insult") Note that the comparison with the "animal" name is not an actual homophone
, but rather the two terms have the same consonants and vowels with different tones
, which are represented by different characters.
According to the original article from Baidu Baike, they originate from an area known as "Ma Le Ge Bi" (Chinese: , English: Mahler Gobi) (resembles , meaning "your mother's fucking cunt"), and some variants of the animal are known as (wò cǎo ní mǎ, resembling /, meaning I fuck your mother), which can only eat fertile grass ( in Chinese, resembling /, meaning "I fuck!" (translated to 'fuck me' in English profanity), while other variants are known as (kuáng cǎo ní mǎ, 狂 meaning "crazily", "violently" or "insanely"), which are dubbed as the "kings" of the Cao Ni Ma. The initial image found in the original Baidu Baike article was a zebra, but was turned into an alpaca in subsequent revisions.
, and thus the alternate name for the region is called cǎo ní mǎ Gēbì . This is close in pronunciation to cào nǐ mā ge bī (/. The animal is characterised as "lively, intelligent and tenacious". However, their existence is said to be threatened by the "river crabs
" which are invading their habitat.
The river crab symbolises official censorship, as its pronunciation resembles the word for "harmony" , in reference to the "harmonious society
" which the leadership professes to aspire to. The term "crab" itself is rural slang, meaning "a bully who uses power through force", and the "River Crab" has become a symbol of crude censorship backed with the threat of force. The river crab is often depicted wearing three wristwatches, since (dài biǎo, "wearing a watch") is homophonous with (dài biǎo, "represent"), referring to the Three Represents
.
and elsewhere on the Internet. One music video, whose musical arrangement of a children's choir has been likened to It's a Small World, scored some 1.4 million hits; a cartoon attracted a quarter million more views; a nature documentary on its habits received 180,000 more hits. Even though many of these videos have gotten past Chinese censorship, some have had their sound blocked, with a message saying "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG
."
Yazhou Zhoukan
reported that Zhan Bin, a teacher at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, also created a new Chinese character
by fusioning the three Chinese character radicals
for grass, mud, and horse. Although the word so far has no pronunciation. Official cleanup of the Internet which threatens the Caonima have already spurned other "Mud Horse" variants such as and with similar connotations.
The "Grass Mud Horse" became widely known on the English-language web following the 11 March 2009 publication of a New York Times article on the phenomenon, sparking widespread discussion on blogs. "Grass Mud Horse" themed merchandise, such as plush dolls are selling over the Internet. One Guangzhou toy manufacturer reportedly produced its first batch of 150 Grass Mud Horse cuddly toys with official birth certificates issued by Mahler Gebi Mystical Creatures Bureau. The animals come in brown and white, named Mahle and Gebi respectively, and sell for 40 yuan each. To accompany these, a user's and feeding manual have been created. Whereas they were called 'Caonima' before the crackdown, Internet sellers now list them using the correct Chinese term '' (Alpaca).
In 2009, renowned artist Ai Weiwei
published an image of himself nude with only a 'Caonima' hiding his genitals, with a caption 『草泥马挡中央』 – a defiant act which some political observers have suggest may have contributed to his arrest in 2011. Michael Sheridan of The Times suggested that Ai had offered himself to the authorities on a platter with this provocative art. Sheridan cited the caption's double meaning in Chinese: one interpretation was given as: "Fuck your mother, the Communist party central committee
".
On 20 March 2009, the New York Times
reported that a Chinese contributor to Global Voices Online
posted a message from an Internet administrator to managers of online bulletin boards warning that "any content related with Grass-Mud Horse should not be promoted and hyped" because "the issue has been elevated to a political level ... The overseas media has exaggerated the incident as a confrontation between netizens and the government."
In a press conference on 25 March, the Foreign Ministry confirmed that China's access to Youtube had been officially blocked since two days earlier. According to Reporters Without Borders
, the block was an attempt to stem videos showing Chinese repression of the Tibetan population in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising of 10 March 1959
, and to block access to the popular Grass Mud Horse video posted in early March.
The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television
issued a directive on 30 March 2009 to highlight 31 categories of content prohibited online, including violence, pornography, and content which may "incite ethnic discrimination or undermine social stability". Many netizens believe the instruction follows the official embarrassment over the rise of the "Grass Mud Horse" phenomenon. Industry observers believe that the move was designed to stop the spread of parodies or other comments on politically sensitive issues in the runup to the anniversary of the 4 June Tiananmen Square protests
. Following the government's directive, most Chinese essays and blog postings made about the Grass Mud Horse have been removed from the Internet after being discovered by government censors.
The Caonima reappeared as a subject of online cartoon satire following the announcement of the Green Dam Youth Escort
pornography blocking software project.
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. There are no specific laws or regulations which the censorship follows...
. It is a play on the Mandarin language words "fuck your mother", and one of the so-called 10 mythical creatures created in a hoax article on Baidu Baike
Baidu Baike
Baidu Encyclopedia is a Chinese language collaborative Web-based encyclopedia provided by the Chinese search engine Baidu. Like Baidu itself, the encyclopedia is heavily self-censored in line with government regulations....
in early 2009 whose names form obscene puns. It has become an Internet chat forum cult phenomenon in China through chat forums and has garnered world-wide press attention, with videos, cartoons and merchandise of the animal, which supposedly resembles the alpaca
Alpaca
An alpaca is a domesticated species of South American camelid. It resembles a small llama in appearance.Alpacas are kept in herds that graze on the level heights of the Andes of southern Peru, northern Bolivia, Ecuador, and northern Chile at an altitude of to above sea level, throughout the year...
, having appeared.
Etymology and species
Cao Ni Ma, literally "Grass Mud Horse", was supposedly a species of alpacaAlpaca
An alpaca is a domesticated species of South American camelid. It resembles a small llama in appearance.Alpacas are kept in herds that graze on the level heights of the Andes of southern Peru, northern Bolivia, Ecuador, and northern Chile at an altitude of to above sea level, throughout the year...
. The name is derived from a profanity , which translates to "Fuck your mother" (See also: "Motherfucker
Motherfucker
Motherfucker is a vulgarism which, in its most literal sense, refers to one who participates in sexual intercourse with a mother, either someone else's mother, or his own.- Variants :...
" and "Mother insult") Note that the comparison with the "animal" name is not an actual homophone
Homophone
A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose , or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms...
, but rather the two terms have the same consonants and vowels with different tones
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
, which are represented by different characters.
According to the original article from Baidu Baike, they originate from an area known as "Ma Le Ge Bi" (Chinese: , English: Mahler Gobi) (resembles , meaning "your mother's fucking cunt"), and some variants of the animal are known as (wò cǎo ní mǎ, resembling /, meaning I fuck your mother), which can only eat fertile grass ( in Chinese, resembling /, meaning "I fuck!" (translated to 'fuck me' in English profanity), while other variants are known as (kuáng cǎo ní mǎ, 狂 meaning "crazily", "violently" or "insanely"), which are dubbed as the "kings" of the Cao Ni Ma. The initial image found in the original Baidu Baike article was a zebra, but was turned into an alpaca in subsequent revisions.
Habitat
The Grass Mud Horse is said to be the dominant species which lives within the Mahler Gobi DesertGobi Desert
The Gobi is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the...
, and thus the alternate name for the region is called cǎo ní mǎ Gēbì . This is close in pronunciation to cào nǐ mā ge bī (/. The animal is characterised as "lively, intelligent and tenacious". However, their existence is said to be threatened by the "river crabs
River crab (Internet slang)
River crab and Harmonious/Harmonize/Harmonization are Internet slangs created by Chinese netizens in reference to Internet censorship or the other censorship of China...
" which are invading their habitat.
The river crab symbolises official censorship, as its pronunciation resembles the word for "harmony" , in reference to the "harmonious society
Harmonious society
The construction of a Harmonious Society is a socio-economic vision that is said to be the ultimate end result of Chinese leader Hu Jintao's signature ideology of the Scientific Development Concept. It serves as the ultimate goal for the ruling Communist Party of China along with Xiaokang society,...
" which the leadership professes to aspire to. The term "crab" itself is rural slang, meaning "a bully who uses power through force", and the "River Crab" has become a symbol of crude censorship backed with the threat of force. The river crab is often depicted wearing three wristwatches, since (dài biǎo, "wearing a watch") is homophonous with (dài biǎo, "represent"), referring to the Three Represents
Three Represents
The Three Represents is a socio-political ideology credited to General Secretary Jiang Zemin which became a guiding ideology of the Communist Party of China at its Sixteenth Party Congress in 2002....
.
Formats
Music videos, as well as "documentaries" and cartoons about "Grass Mud Horse" started appearing on YoutubeYouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
and elsewhere on the Internet. One music video, whose musical arrangement of a children's choir has been likened to It's a Small World, scored some 1.4 million hits; a cartoon attracted a quarter million more views; a nature documentary on its habits received 180,000 more hits. Even though many of these videos have gotten past Chinese censorship, some have had their sound blocked, with a message saying "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...
."
Yazhou Zhoukan
Yazhou Zhoukan
Yazhou Zhoukan , literally as "Asia Weekly", is the only Chinese language international affairs newsweekly which has been published for over 20 years...
reported that Zhan Bin, a teacher at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, also created a new Chinese character
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
by fusioning the three Chinese character radicals
Radical (Chinese character)
A Chinese radical is a component of a Chinese character. The term may variously refer to the original semantic element of a character, or to any semantic element, or, loosely, to any element whatever its origin or purpose...
for grass, mud, and horse. Although the word so far has no pronunciation. Official cleanup of the Internet which threatens the Caonima have already spurned other "Mud Horse" variants such as and with similar connotations.
The "Grass Mud Horse" became widely known on the English-language web following the 11 March 2009 publication of a New York Times article on the phenomenon, sparking widespread discussion on blogs. "Grass Mud Horse" themed merchandise, such as plush dolls are selling over the Internet. One Guangzhou toy manufacturer reportedly produced its first batch of 150 Grass Mud Horse cuddly toys with official birth certificates issued by Mahler Gebi Mystical Creatures Bureau. The animals come in brown and white, named Mahle and Gebi respectively, and sell for 40 yuan each. To accompany these, a user's and feeding manual have been created. Whereas they were called 'Caonima' before the crackdown, Internet sellers now list them using the correct Chinese term '' (Alpaca).
In 2009, renowned artist Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist, active in sculpture, installation, architecture, curating, photography, film, and social, political and cultural criticism. Ai collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron as the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008...
published an image of himself nude with only a 'Caonima' hiding his genitals, with a caption 『草泥马挡中央』 – a defiant act which some political observers have suggest may have contributed to his arrest in 2011. Michael Sheridan of The Times suggested that Ai had offered himself to the authorities on a platter with this provocative art. Sheridan cited the caption's double meaning in Chinese: one interpretation was given as: "Fuck your mother, the Communist party central committee
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China is the highest authority within the Communist Party of China. Its approximately 350 members and alternates are selected once every five years by the National Party Congress....
".
Censorship
The Beijing Television Cultural Center fire earned a number of photoshopped parodies, including one with an alpaca's outline in the smoke.On 20 March 2009, the New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
reported that a Chinese contributor to Global Voices Online
Global Voices Online
Global Voices Online is an international network of bloggers and citizen journalists that follow, report, and summarizes what is going on in the blogosphere in every corner of the world...
posted a message from an Internet administrator to managers of online bulletin boards warning that "any content related with Grass-Mud Horse should not be promoted and hyped" because "the issue has been elevated to a political level ... The overseas media has exaggerated the incident as a confrontation between netizens and the government."
In a press conference on 25 March, the Foreign Ministry confirmed that China's access to Youtube had been officially blocked since two days earlier. According to Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
, the block was an attempt to stem videos showing Chinese repression of the Tibetan population in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising of 10 March 1959
1959 Tibetan uprising
The 1959 Tibetan uprising, or 1959 Tibetan Rebellion began on 10 March 1959, when a revolt erupted in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, which had been under the effective control of the Communist Party of China since the Seventeen Point Agreement in 1951...
, and to block access to the popular Grass Mud Horse video posted in early March.
The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television
State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television
The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television is an executive branch under the State Council of the People's Republic of China...
issued a directive on 30 March 2009 to highlight 31 categories of content prohibited online, including violence, pornography, and content which may "incite ethnic discrimination or undermine social stability". Many netizens believe the instruction follows the official embarrassment over the rise of the "Grass Mud Horse" phenomenon. Industry observers believe that the move was designed to stop the spread of parodies or other comments on politically sensitive issues in the runup to the anniversary of the 4 June Tiananmen Square protests
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
. Following the government's directive, most Chinese essays and blog postings made about the Grass Mud Horse have been removed from the Internet after being discovered by government censors.
The Caonima reappeared as a subject of online cartoon satire following the announcement of the Green Dam Youth Escort
Green Dam Youth Escort
Green Dam Youth Escort is content-control software for Windows developed in the People's Republic of China . Originally under a directive from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to take effect on 1 July 2009, it was to be mandatory to have either the software pre-installed, or...
pornography blocking software project.
See also
- Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures
- Internet in the People's Republic of ChinaInternet in the People's Republic of ChinaThe first connection of the mainland of the People's Republic of China with the Internet was established on between ICA Beijing and Karlsruhe University in Germany, under the leadership of Prof. Werner Zorn and Prof. Wang Yunfeng. Since then the Internet in China has grown to host the largest base...
- Jia JunpengJia JunpengJia Junpeng was an internet meme and catchphrase that became popular within the People's Republic of China in 2009.- Origins :A post in Chinese titled "Jia Junpeng, your mother is calling you home to eat" appeared on the Chinese portal Baidu in the forum for the game World of Warcraft at 10:59 a.m...
- Mandarin Chinese profanity
- NetizenNetizenThe term Netizen is a portmanteau of the English words internet and citizen. It is defined as an entity or person actively involved in online communities and a user of the internet, especially an avid one. The term can also imply an interest in improving the internet, especially in regard to open...
- River crab (Internet slang)River crab (Internet slang)River crab and Harmonious/Harmonize/Harmonization are Internet slangs created by Chinese netizens in reference to Internet censorship or the other censorship of China...
- Very erotic very violentVery erotic very violentVery erotic very violent is a Chinese internet meme that originated from a news report on China Central Television's flagship Xinwen Lianbo program allegedly quoting a schoolgirl describing a web page...
- Yax LizardYax LizardThe Yax Lizard - Yà Kè Xī - is a mythical creature named after a Xinjiang musical dance program Happy life Yaxshi in the CCTV Spring Festival's Gala 2010. It was supposedly a Komodo Dragon...
External links
- The official Mud Grass Horse Song in the original Chinese with English annotations.
- Sim Chi Yin, "Mythical creature a not-so-secret weapon against Net nannies", Straits Times, 27 March 2009
- China Digital Times' Grass-mud Horse Lexicon