grass mud horse

plural grass mud horses · alternative grass-mud horse · alternative Grass Mud Horse

1. One of the ten "mythical Baidu deities" invented by Chinese internet users for the purpose of circumventing censorship. Usually depicted as resembling an alpaca, and is supposedly living in the Mahler Gobi desert.

   A YouTube children’s song about the beast has drawn nearly 1.4 million viewers. A grass-mud horse cartoon has logged a quarter million more views. A nature documentary on its habits attracted 180,000 more.

   2009 March 11, Michael Wines, “A Dirty Pun Tweaks China’s Online Censors”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 11 Jul 2011

   1 more example

   What began as an entertaining by-product of that internet clean-up has become a sensation. This is because “Grass Mud Horse” in Chinese is a homonym for an unprintable but widely used phrase. Both the phrase – “F*** your mother” – and the name of the mythical animal are pronounced as caonima, although using different tones

   2009 March 6, “Chinese fight internet censors with "Grass Mud Horse" cuddly toy”, in Times Online, archived from the original on 29 Apr 2009