What "grass-mud horse" means in Chinese
The New York Times reports that videos showing the “grass-mud horse” have become hugely popular in China as a kind of subversive protest against censorship.
That’s because, as the paper says, the horse is a “a mythical creature whose name, in Chinese, sounds very much like an especially vile obscenity. Which is precisely the point.”
The irony is that the Times’ own style prevents them from saying what the obscenity is. You’ve got to Google to find out that it means, “Fuck your mother.”
