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Meet the Grass Mud Horse (), a rare animal that has become phenomenally popular in the past month.
The animal, whose name sounds like a common curse (), is the most famous of the Ten Legendary Beasts of Baidu, non-existent animals that were inserted into Baidu's user-editable encyclopedia. Although the majority are juvenile puns for curse words or genitalia, the collective editing process did manage to come up with a few clever descriptions.
Here are the rest:
- The Dafei Chicken (): A strange bird that likes exercise. (, slang for "masturbate")
- The Chrysanthemum Silkworm (): A silkwork that feeds on chrysanthemum flowers instead of mulberry leaves. (, an insult that means something like "bugger")
- The Midge Butterfly (): An exceedingly rare creature only found on the Tibetan plateau. (From , Japanese for "stop it"; via imported porn)
- The Weishen Whale (): During his maritime adventures, Zheng He discovered this creature was hunted as the raw materials for women's underpants. (, "sanitary napkin")
- The Jiba Cat (): A creature that lives in a dark, damp environment and competes for food with the White Tiger. According to historical records, the Jiba Cat flourished during the reign of the Zhengde Emperor. (, slang for "pubic hair")
- The Qianlie Crab (): A legendary crab that once stopped up the Grand Canal. (From , "prostate")
- The Crying Paddy Goose (): In the Kangxi era, a large goose dove into a certain field, damaging it and causing the local farmers to come down with a strange sickness. (From , "vaginitis")
- The Franco-Croatian Squid (, scientific name "Vai-te Foder"): A fierce species of squid originally inhabiting Europe and the Americas. (From the English-language curse "Fuck you")
- The Puremen (): A rare bird found only in Sichuan and Hunan; formerly found in the area that is now the Republic of Yemen. (From , a nickname used for Super Girl winner Li Yuchun among fans who claim, whether sincerely or ironically, that she's a man. Their catchphrase is , "Brother Chun is all man", which is where Yemen comes in)
And finally, in a nod to the editors of the encyclopedia, there's the Stork-Cat Ape () that inhabits Baidu County in Lanzhou. This entry pokes fun at Baidu administrators () who continually spar with the online pranksters and who ultimately deleted all of these entries.
Although the Ten Legendary Beasts have been wiped from Baidu, the Grass Mud Horse lives on in Photoshopped images (the cute cousin to the Alpaca turned up at the CCTV fire) and videos.
Here's the "Song of the Grass Mud Horse," a spot-on parody of a contemporary children's songs:
For lyrics and analysis, see China Digital Times.
Another clever parody uses the familiar format of Animal World (动物世界), a popular CCTV program, to introduce the Grass Dirt Horse and its habitat.
But fun with Baidupedia is not entirely about dirty words. For a different level of satire, check out the now-deleted entry for revolutionary hero Wei Guangzheng (伟光正, taken from 伟大, 光荣, 正确, "great, glorious, correct"):
Wei Guangzheng
Comrade Wei Guangzheng is a superior product of natural selection. In the course of competition for survival, because of certain unmatched qualities of his genetic makeup, he has a great ability to survive and reproduce, and hence Wei Guangzheng represents the most advanced state of species evolution.
Here is the evolution of Wei Guangzheng's thinking: Since the day of his birth, comrade Wei Guangzheng established a guiding ideology for the people's benefit, and in the course of connecting it with the real circumstances of his beloved Sun Kingdom, a process of repeated comparisons that involved the twists and turns of campaigns of encirclement and suppression, his ideology finally realized a historic leap forward and generated two major theoretic achievements. The first great theoretic leap was the idea of leading a handful of people to take up arms to cause trouble, rebellion, and revolution in order to build a brave new world, and to successfully seize power. This was the "spear ideology." The second great theoretic leap was a theory, with Sun Kingdom characteristics, in which Wei Guangzheng was unswervingly upheld as leader and the people were forever prevented from standing up. This was the "shield theory." Under the guidance of these two great theoretic achievements, comrade Wei Guangzheng won victory after victory. Practice has proven, "Without Wei Guangzheng, there would be no Sun Kingdom." Following the road of comrade Wei Guangzheng was the choice of the people of the Sun Kingdom and an inevitable trend of historical development.
Comrade Wei Guangzheng endured a bitter struggle for survival. In his struggles with natural conditions, he climbed mountains and trudged through plains, expressing with an iron will a legendary story of pathos that continues to impress his posterity. In struggles with heterogeneous individuals, he engaged in a long-term fight with the reactionary government of the time and was ultimately triumphant. In his struggles with individuals in his own group, he cast out the cow devils and snake spirits that organized internal reactionary activity, and dealt them harsh punishment. This is the reason why comrade Wei Guangzheng could continue to survive: he fit perfectly with the three main factors of natural selection.
In the harmonious environment that comrade Wei Guangzheng himself constructed, mates were plentiful and there were no natural enemies, so Wei Guangzhengs could multiply quickly. Their numbers swiftly increased. Today, Wei Guangzhengs inherit the advantages of their Wei Guangzheng ancestors, and also attempt various innovations. For example, many Wei Guangzhengs use their unmatched power to amass money, setting records that are continually broken. Of course, evolutionary principles mean that there is also mutation, as when, following his leadership of a handful of people to take up arms to cause trouble, rebellion, and revolution and to seize power, Wei Guangzheng began to detest "a handful of people"....
The reason for this mutation may be due to errors in genetic transmission during the period of the second leap of Wei Guangzheng Thought. It is said that mutation frequently causes cells to function improperly or even die, or could lead to cancer. Yet at the same time, mutation is a motivating factor for the evolution of species: sudden changes that are less than ideal will be naturally discarded, while beneficial changes will accumulate. In this way, we see that mutations directly affect the evolutionary direction of Wei Guangzheng.
Update: Our friends from the World of Warcraft boards on Baidu's BBS have stopped by for a visit (草泥马被国外知名媒体报道 WOW吧名扬海外了).
- Tianya repost (Chinese): The world's four greatest mythological creatures
- Leitie (Chinese): Ten greatest mythological creatures on Baidu Baike
- Wei Guangzheng entry via Big Window
- Caonima image via Can't leave you
- China Digital Times: Song of the Grass Dirt Horse
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