A strange, strange story in the New York Times today looks at the grass-mud horse craze in China, an effort by a fed-up Chinese citizenry to mock Beijing’s web censorship. Though my understanding of this is somewhere between mediocre and sound, what I can gather is that the grass-mud horse, an alpaca-like animal, sounds exactly like “fuck your mother” in Mandarin Chinese. Someone made a YouTube children’s video, that as of Thursday has logged 1.5 million viewers, which says something to the effect of “the grass-mud horses are courageous and tenacious.” The horses come from the Malegbi desert, which translates to “your mother’s cunt” (no joke) and work to defeat the river crabs (synonymous with “censorship”). Not only are people watching the video, but people are buying grass-mud horse stuffed animals and in general, celebrating the new symbolism of what could be the next major Chinese democratic resistance. And just in time for the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square. If I were Hu Jintao, I’d be totally fine with a cute furry animal replacing a student in front of a tank as the iconic image of China’s pro-democracy movement.

Here’s the YouTube video:

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