You might have seen the interesting animal somewhere (Alpaca, from South American), but do you know its especial name in China? It was named as "Grass Mud Horse", or "Cao Ni Ma" in Mandarin Chinese which means "fucking your mother". As you can see, the chinese character appeared on the upper right is a non-existent character created from a combination of the 3 characters: Grass, Mud, and Horse.
All of these are both created by Chinese netizens. Not only the new name and the new character, but they also created stories for this animal. It's said to be living in the "Mahler Gobi Dessert", which doesn't exist and whose name also means "fucking" in Chinese. The other species living on the same land is "River Crab", whose name pronounced as "He Xie" in Chinese which is the same as "Harmony".
Since the goverment policy of "Constructing a Harmoious Society" is usually used as the reason for censorship, and even the word "harmonious" itself had became a censored word in some forums, people often use the homophone "river crab" instead.
The river crab in this context is usually shown as a crab wearing 3 watches. While the phrase "wear the watch" in Chinese is a homophone of "represent", the image is a satire on the China Communist Party's ideology "Three Represents" which was proposed by Jiang Zemin, the former President of China.
It's said that the "River Crab" is a kind of evil animal and should be responsible for the descent of the numbers of the "Grass Mud Horse". On the contrary, the "Grass Mud Horse" is usually regarded as a represent of the freedom of speech. People had also developed some tragic stories to tell the terrible war between these 2 spices.
Besides of the animal, people had also proposed an anime style avatar for the famous software "Green Dam" and named as "Green Dam Girl". She is an anime girl dressed in green, with her hat has a logo of the "River Crab" on it. In her right hand is a painting bucket which she use to filter censored words. The Chinese character on the bucket means "filtering" or "blocking".
She is said to be noble and a little bit senile, and the reason is that she cost 40 millions CNY and couldn't do a good job, e.g., she will block a picture of Garfield but pass the porn of the Black. Besides, she don't like the "Grass Mud Horse" and even try to catch them. However, at the last, her name "Green Dam Girl" itself had became a censored word in China.
It is interesting that, all of them are not only famous on the Internet, but also popular within the real life. The dolls of the "Grass Mud Horse" are sold off in some cities, and there are also cosplay for the "Green Dam Girl". The stories of them had spread all over the society, and there are even songs and mangas for them. The word "River Crab" is popular and had been used everywhere since it's relatively hard to be censored. In fact, their figures are well accepted and had been used as a protest against the goverment censorship policy.
Nevertheless, they are impressive artificial specialties of China, and a must-know for those who want to understand the modern Chinese better. By the way, they're cute, aren't they?
References in Chinese (中文鏈接，不熟悉本文所述天朝神物的中國網友請自覺充電):
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/草泥馬
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/河蟹_(網路用語)
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/绿坝娘
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