The Grass Mud Horse and Chinese Internet Resistance Through Coded Speech

Research Compilation for “The Fires of History”

1. The Linguistic Mechanism: How Tones Create Subversion

Mandarin Tonal System and Homophones

Mandarin Chinese has four tones (plus a neutral tone), meaning the same syllable pronounced with different pitch contours produces entirely different words. This creates an enormous number of homophones.

The Core Pun:

• 草泥马 (Cao Ni Ma) – literally “Grass Mud Horse” – a fictional alpaca-like creature
• 肏你妈 (Cao Ni Ma) – “fuck your mother” – one of the most vulgar insults in Mandarin

The tonal differences are subtle:

• 草 (cao, 3rd tone) = grass / 泥 (ni, 2nd tone) = mud / 马 (ma, 3rd tone) = horse
• 肏 (cao, 4th tone) = to fuck / 你 (ni, 3rd tone) = you/your / 妈 (ma, 1st tone) = mother

In written online communication (where tones are not marked in casual usage), the double meaning is immediately apparent to any native speaker. The genius is plausible deniability – one can claim to be discussing a fictional animal while clearly communicating something profane and politically defiant.

Why It Works

1. Vulgarity disguised as innocence: A cute alpaca is wholesome on its surface while the phonetic content is maximally obscene
2. Anti-censorship weaponry: The Great Firewall relies on keyword filtering; homophones bypass automated filters while humans understand perfectly
3. Absurdist escalation: Users built an entire fictional ecosystem, mythology, songs, and mock-documentaries
4. Collective participation: Using these terms became a marker of internet literacy and subtle political dissent

2. The Complete Mythology: The “Ten Mythical Creatures”

Origins

In early 2009, the mythology crystallized around the “十大神兽” (Shi Da Shenshou) – the “Ten Mythical Creatures” – appearing on Baidu Baike (China’s Wikipedia equivalent). Each was an elaborate homophonic pun on vulgar or politically sensitive phrases. (New York Times)

The Creatures

The Central Narrative: Grass Mud Horse vs. River Crab

The core mythology: Grass Mud Horses live peacefully in the Mahler Gobi Desert (马勒戈壁 / Ma Le Ge Bi – homophone of “your mother’s cunt”) until the River Crabs invade.

The allegory is transparent:

• Grass Mud Horses = irreverent Chinese netizens
• River Crabs = the CCP censorship apparatus and “harmony” doctrine
• The Mahler Gobi Desert = the internet (a vulgar, freewheeling space)
• The battle = free expression vs. state censorship

Cultural Artifacts

The Nature Documentary: A mock nature documentary about the Grass Mud Horse, narrated in deadpan BBC-style, featuring actual alpaca footage with voiceover explaining their habitat (the Mahler Gobi), diet, and struggle against River Crabs. Went massively viral before being censored.

The Children’s Song: Performed in the style of actual Chinese children’s educational music, bouncy and cheerful, where every proper noun is a homophonic obscenity:

在那荒茫美丽的马勒戈壁 / 有一群草泥马 / 他们活泼又聪明 / 他们调皮又灵敏 (“In the vast and beautiful Mahler Gobi / There is a herd of Grass Mud Horses / They are lively and clever / They are naughty and quick”)

3. Winnie the Pooh and Xi Jinping

The Origin (June 2013)

A photograph of Xi Jinping walking with Obama at Sunnylands was placed next to Winnie the Pooh walking with Tigger. The physical resemblance was striking. More comparisons followed (Xi/Abe paired with Pooh/Eeyore). (Know Your Meme)

The comparison became a tool for circumventing keyword censorship – you cannot easily filter for pictures of a cartoon bear.

The Censorship Response

• 2013-2017: Gradual escalation. Pooh images near Xi references deleted from Weibo and WeChat.
• 2017: Winnie the Pooh reportedly blocked on Weibo during the 19th Party Congress. (Censorship of Winnie-the-Pooh in China — Wikipedia)
• 2018: Christopher Robin (Disney live-action film) denied release in China.
• 2019: A student (Luo Daiqing) sentenced to approximately 6 months for sharing Pooh/Xi memes, charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” (寻衅滋事). (Radio Free Asia)

The Irony

The heavy-handed censorship transformed a harmless visual joke into one of the most potent symbols of Chinese censorship worldwide – a textbook Streisand Effect weaponized as deliberate strategy.

4. Other Chinese Internet Trolling and Censorship Evasion

Linguistic Evasion Techniques

Homophones (谐音):

• 六四 (liu si, “June Fourth” / Tiananmen) evaded through: “May 35th” (5/31 + 4), “VIIV” (Roman numerals), “8 squared” (8² = 64)
• 天安门 rendered with substitute characters

Pinyin Abbreviations:

• ZF = 政府 (government), GCD = 共产党 (Communist Party), TG = 土共 (derogatory for CCP)

The Euphemism Treadmill: Users create coded term → censors block it → users create replacement → cycle repeats. Produces layers of euphemisms, each generation more creative.

Notable Coded Terms

• 赵家人 (“The Zhao Family”) – from Lu Xun’s The True Story of Ah Q; refers to the ruling elite
• 天朝 (“Celestial Empire”) – ironic archaic term for China
• 翻墙 (“climbing the wall”) – using a VPN
• 五毛党 (“50 Cent Army”) – government-paid online commentators; 自干五 = “voluntary 50 centers” (defend government for free – considered even more contemptible)
• 404 – the HTTP error code became shorthand for censorship itself
• 大翻译运动 (“Great Translation Movement,” 2022+) – translating extreme nationalist Chinese content into English to embarrass the government internationally (The Diplomat)

Significant Events

• Tank Man references: Recreated with rubber ducks, LEGO, other materials. Yellow rubber ducks replacing tanks became a recognized code. (Slate)
• Empty Chair (空椅子): Reference to Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony (2010), where he was imprisoned. Subsequently censored. (NobelPrize.org)
• Li Wenliang’s Weibo (2020): COVID whistleblower’s page became a “wailing wall” for millions expressing grief and political frustration. (China Digital Times)
• Blank Paper Protests (白纸运动, 2022): Holding a blank sheet of paper as protest – the ultimate minimalist evasion of content-based censorship, as there is literally no content to censor. (Amnesty International)

Technical Evasion

• Image-based text, steganography, mirror/upside-down text, classical Chinese (文言文), Morse code, emoji substitution
• Blockchain graffiti (2018): A Peking University student’s letter about a sexual assault cover-up was preserved on the Ethereum blockchain after being repeatedly censored (Quartz)

5. Timeline

• 2004-2008: “Harmony” doctrine becomes propaganda; “being harmonized” = censored; River Crab pun develops
• January 2009: Anti-vulgarity campaign launches
• Early 2009: Ten Mythical Creatures appear on Baidu Baike as satirical response; Grass Mud Horse goes viral
• March 2009: Baidu deletes the entry; international media coverage begins (New York Times)
• 2009: Ai Weiwei poses nude with a Grass Mud Horse stuffed toy (Grass Mud Horse — Wikipedia)
• June 2013: First Xi/Pooh comparisons
• 2017: Major Pooh censorship during 19th Party Congress
• 2018: Christopher Robin blocked
• 2020: Li Wenliang’s death triggers massive online grief; his letter reproduced in emoji, Morse code, Braille, Elvish script
• 2022: Great Translation Movement; Blank Paper Protests
• 2019: Pooh-related prison sentence (Luo Daiqing)

6. Academic Sources

Key Scholars

• An Xiao Mina, Memes to Movements (2019, Beacon Press) – most directly relevant work on memes as political tools in authoritarian contexts (Beacon Press)
• Jason Q. Ng, Blocked on Weibo (2013, The New Press) – systematic analysis of censored terms (The New Press)
• Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression” (2013, American Political Science Review) – landmark quantitative study (Harvard)
• Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret Roberts, “How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts” (2017, APSR) – 448 million fabricated posts per year (Harvard)
• Margaret Roberts, Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall (2018, Princeton)
• Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China (2009, Columbia)
• Ethan Zuckerman, “Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism” (2008)
• China Digital Times (chinadigitaltimes.net) – UC Berkeley; maintains “Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon”

Summary: Why This Matters for the Book

The Grass Mud Horse phenomenon represents one of the most sophisticated examples of collective political trolling in internet history:

1. Linguistic specificity: Exploits a structural feature of Chinese (tonal homophones) with no exact English equivalent
2. Mythological depth: Not a single joke but an interconnected fictional world with narrative conflict, geography, and cultural artifacts. World-building as political resistance.
3. Scalability: Infinitely generative – any sensitive term can be replaced with homophones
4. The censorship paradox: Every act of censorship validates the critique. Banning Winnie the Pooh proves the point more effectively than any argument.
5. Historical continuity: Coded political speech has deep roots in Chinese literary tradition going back centuries. The internet democratized what was once the province of educated literati.

Chapter Fit: Ch. 15 (Trolling as Resistance) primary; Ch. 17 (Dark Mirror) for state response; Ch. 6 (Trolling the Gods) for linguistic trickster parallels.

Source URLs

• Grass Mud Horse — Wikipedia
• Badiucao documentary on Chinese internet resistance
• An Xiao Mina, Memes to Movements (2019)
• Great Firewall keyword filtering — Citizen Lab
• Chinese internet homophones as resistance — The Atlantic
• Ten Mythical Creatures of the Chinese Internet — China Digital Times