Yesterday, the New York Times reported the story and phenomenon of “Grass Mud Horse”, a very popular dirty pun on China Internet since it first appearance in January.

The word “grass mud horse (草泥马 – cǎo ní mǎ)” sounds similar to “mother fucker (操你妈 – cāo nǐ mā)” in Chinese pronunciation.

The grass-mud horse is an example of something that, in China’s authoritarian system, passes as subversive behavior. Conceived as an impish protest against censorship, the foul-named little horse has not merely made government censors look ridiculous, although it has surely done that.

Government computers scan Chinese cyberspace constantly, hunting for words and phrases that censors have dubbed inflammatory or seditious. When they find one, the offending blog or chat can be blocked within minutes.

So while grass-mud horse sounds like a nasty curse in Chinese, its written Chinese characters are completely different, and its meaning – taken literally – is benign. Thus the beast not only has dodged censor computers, but has also eluded the government’s own ban on so-called offensive behavior.

Actually, besides the “grass-mud horse”, Chinese netizens also created many other dirty puns. The most famous ones are called as The Ten Legendary Beasts.

1. “Grass Mud Horse” (草泥马 – cǎo ní mǎ) similar pronunciation as “mother fucker” (操你妈 – cāo nǐ mā).

2. “Chrysanthemum Silkworm” (菊花蚕 – jú huā cán), similar pronunciation as “Bugger [slang]“ (菊花残 – jú huā cán).

3. “Midge Butterfly” (雅蠛蝶 – yǎ miè dié), similar pronunciation as “Stop fucking [Japanese word mentioned frequently in Japanese AV]” (やめて – yá miè dié).

4. “Franco-Croatian Squid”, (法克鱿 – fǎ kè yóu), similar pronunciation as the English word “Fuck You” (fʌk ju:).

5. “Dafei Chicken” (达菲鸡 – dá fēi jī), similar pronunciation as “Masturbation [slang]” (打飞机 – dǎ fēi jī).

6. “Crying Paddy Goose” (吟稻雁 – yín dào yàn), similar pronunciation as “Vaginitis” (阴道炎 – yīn dào án).

7. “Qianlie Crab” (潜烈蟹 – qián liè xiè), similar pronunciation as “Prostate”(前列腺 – qián liè xiàn).

8. “Weishen Whale” (尾申鲸 – wěi shēn jīng), similar pronunciation as “Sanitary Napkin” (卫生巾 – wèi shēng jīn).

9. “Jiba Cat” (吉跋猫 – jí bá māo), similar pronunciation as “Pubic Hair [slang]” (鸡巴毛 – jī ba máo).

10. “Quail Dove” (鹑鸽 – chún gē), similar pronunciation as “Brother Chun [nickname of China Super Girl winner Li Yuchun, whether sincerely or ironically, that she's a man]” (春哥 – chūn gē).

Soon after, there were more and more other animals appeared on the Internet. Click here to see a summary post (Chinese) about them on Mop DZH, one of the most popular online communities in China.

In addition, creative netizen also made the song of the Grass Mud Horse and the cartoon of the Grass Mud Horse. Another video uses the familiar format of Animal World (动物世界), a popular CCTV program, to introduce the Grass Mud Horse and its habitat.

An alpaca-like animal in fact, the videos show alpacas  it lives in a desert whose name resembles yet another foul word. The horses are courageous, tenacious and overcome the difficult environment, the song about them says.

But they face a problem: invading river crabs that are devouring their grassland. In spoken Chinese, river crab sounds very much like harmony, which in China’s cyberspace has become a synonym for censorship. Censored bloggers often say their posts have been “harmonized”, a term directly derived from President Hu Jintao’s regular exhortations for Chinese citizens to create a harmonious society.

In the end, one song says, the horses are victorious: They defeated the river crabs in order to protect their grassland; river crabs forever disappeared from the Ma Le Ge Bi, the desert.

To Chinese intellectuals, the song’s message is clearly subversive, a lesson that citizens can flout authority even as they appear to follow the rules. Its underlying tone is: I know you do not allow me to say certain things. See, I am completely cooperative, right?” the Beijing Film Academy professor and social critic Cui Weiping wrote in her own blog. I am singing a cute children’s song – I am a grass-mud horse! Even though it is heard by the entire world, you can’t say I’ve broken the law.”

Of course, the government could decide to delete all Internet references to the phrase grass-mud horse, an easy task for its censorship software. But while China’s cybercitizens may be weak, they are also ingenious.