{"id":1094,"date":"2011-02-18T19:28:43","date_gmt":"2011-02-19T03:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libidot.org\/blog\/?p=1094"},"modified":"2011-02-18T19:28:43","modified_gmt":"2011-02-19T03:28:43","slug":"the-grass-mud-horse-and-the-10-sacred-animals-on-chinas-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/?p=1094","title":{"rendered":"Sacred Animals on China's Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Images and Excerpt From my forthcoming book People’s Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet.<\/a>(Forthcoming with Intellect Books, 2011)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Grass-Mud Horse is supposedly a species of the alpaca. The name is derived from c\u00e0o n\u01d0 m\u0101(\u808f\u4f60\u5988), whose near-equivalent word translates as “fuck your mother”. The greatest enemy of the grass-mud horse is the “river crab” (\u6cb3\u87f9, h\u00e9xi\u00e8) whose name resembles \u548c\u8c10 h\u00e9xi\u00e9 meaning “harmony”, referring to government censors who wish to create a “harmonious society.”(\u548c\u8ae7\u793e\u6703, hexie shehui) (Lam 2009) .The grass-mud horse spurred people\u2019s imagination as evidenced in the thousands of image-collages and mockumentaries that have appeared online. The fad spread like a benign virus and was later popularized as a stuffed animal, an activist icon-turned commodity. The popular theme song of the grass-mud horse was banned by The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television in March 2009 together with the official blocking of the entire meme itself.<\/p>\n

The mythic figure survived and was later creatively conjoined with \u201cGreendam Girl\u201d (\u7da0\u58e9\u5a18, lvba niang) a the satirical cartoon character who protects state interests.\u00a0 She preaches a compulsive rhetoric of \u201charmonizing the family\u201d ,acting like a bossy government official who enjoys saddling people with moral directives. The surreal and humorous qualities of these figures tapped into a populist stream, or indeed pop culture itself, and helped to spur a viral movement of protest.<\/p>\n

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Mythical animals \u201cGrass Mud Horse\u201d and \u201cSmall Elegant Butterfly\u201d were invented in a fight against the government decision to have all PC\u2019s installed with the anti-pornography filtering software Greendam Youth Escort.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Grass-Mud Horse is a merged together with a giant robotic character. It is portrayed as a powerful and sexual furry animal that runs around, tramples and destroys its environment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>LiyuChun\u00a0 or \u201cbrother Chun\u201d (Li Yuchun, \u674e\u5b87\u6625; brother Chun \u6625\u54e5, pinyin: chun ge) is sitting on Grass-Mud Horse.\u00a0 Grass Mud Horse is depicted as a holy animal and LiyuChun as a God.\u00a0 Liyuchun is a TV celebrity who became famous through the reality TV show Supergirl (\u8d85\u7d1a\u5973\u8072, chaoji nvsheng) and then became an Internet celebrity on the fansite <\/strong>www.xinchunge.com<\/a> . On this site people at once adore and satirize her androgynous or \u201creal man\u201d appearance.\u00a0 In the text we can read that she is hiding a masculine anatomy and genitals underneath the warrior-dress. <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

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The character in green outfit is called Lady Greendam(<\/strong>\u7da0<\/strong>\u58e9<\/strong>\u5a18<\/strong>, Lvbai Niang). Like Grass Mud Horse, she was invented by people to criticize the government proposal to install the filtering software Greendam Youth Escort on all PC computers. In this cartoon, she parades her green uniform and warns people not to watch Hentai erotica.\u00a0 Meanwhile she herself gets sucked into the screen. She has written a slogan on her blackboard that says: \u201cHarmonize Your family.\u201d (<\/strong>\u6cb3\u87f9<\/strong>\u4f60<\/strong>\u5168\u5bb6<\/strong>, hexie ni quanjias)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Images and Excerpt From my forthcoming book People’s Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet.(Forthcoming with Intellect Books, 2011) The Grass-Mud Horse is supposedly a species of the alpaca. The name is derived from c\u00e0o n\u01d0 m\u0101(\u808f\u4f60\u5988), whose near-equivalent word translates as “fuck your mother”. The greatest enemy of the grass-mud horse is the… Continue reading Sacred Animals on China's Internet<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-proceedings","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}