In a country without a free press, it is impossible to overstate the profound impact that the Internet has had on society. The simple ability to see and read the internal thoughts of one’s fellow compatriots, as well as the viewpoints of people from around the world, is prodding an estimated 250 million Chinese to express themselves more freely, to consider a multiplicity of opinions in matters of public debate, and, most simply, to feel just a little bit less alone in this world. And sure, the Internet is censored in China, but the efforts of government watchdogs can be best likened, as one well-known Chinese blogger put it, to a dam that “is leaking all over the place.”

Online bulletin board systems (BBS) hosted by Chinese universities have long been hotbeds of intellectual debate, and today seemingly every company, media outlet, Web portal, and random organization in the country has a BBS garnering an estimated ten million new posts each day, with single posts frequently provoking hundreds, if not thousands, of replies. A mostly dead medium in the West, BBSs are invaluable to Chinese users because of the anonymity they afford. Blogs, too, are a noteworthy phenomenon, arguably far more widespread and vibrant than in the West. Everyone in China and their mother, it seems, has a blog: pop stars, CEOs of top companies, small-town mayors, powerful government officials, poor migrant workers, and journalists disillusioned with the censorship they face in their day jobs with state-owned media outlets. Many consider BBSs and blogs to be the truest reflection of what ordinary people on the ground really think about an issue-to the extent that the traditional media regularly quote from blog gers, and newspapers publish entire blog entries as op-ed columns.

There is, of course, a negative for every positive, and thus in the worst cases the Internet has served to ignite a terrifying mob mentality that hearkens back to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. The “human-flesh search engine,” as these “netizens” call themselves, is infamous for harnessing the power of the Internet to hunt down people who, deservedly or not, have been slandered online and deemed worthy of punishment by the online lynch mobs. Some people have been physically attacked; others have had to change addresses, jobs, and phone numbers. In one fairly typical example, a Chinese student attending Duke University, who was perceived to be in support of Free Tibet protestors, was targeted by angry Chinese who posted her picture, contact information, and parents’ home address online. She received an avalanche of death threats, her parents got harassing phone calls at work, and one person claimed to have left human feces on her parents’ doorstep.

Overall, however, the Internet’s influence has been overwhelmingly positive. In many instances, it has filled in for the lack of a reliable judicial system and overcome endemic government corruption to bring justice for the masses. The Internet enables news of wrongdoing and injustice to spread at the speed of light and has spurred many real-life protests, petition drives, and heartfelt movements to get corrupt officials fired and persuade the central government to investigate allegations ignored by local governments. It has helped draw attention to corporate abuse and to raise money for ordinary people suffering under the weight of crippling medical costs and other hardships.

Not to imply, of course, that nascent revolution lurks in every bored instant message sent from one underpaid office worker to another, or every inane blog post about what some person ate for breakfast. Like Internet users the world over, Chinese netizens are chain-smoking in twenty-four-hour Internet cafés or lazing about at home, mainly idling away the days of their lives watching online video clips of stupid pet tricks, shopping for handbags on the Chinese equivalent to eBay, bitching about China’s notoriously terrible national soccer team, and playing hour after interminable hour of Counter-Strike. And, hell, they may all know how to get around the government’s censoring mechanisms, but, let’s face it, the vast majority of them are doing so in order to download pirated movies and, of course, to watch porn.

So here, for your reference, is all the latest in chat slang, Internet crazes, and weirdo sociological phenomena that make up the vibrant, silly, important, ridiculous, and revolutionary world of the Chinese Internet.

Society, censorship, and Internet memes

GFW

Stands for “Great Firewall of China,” a play on the Great Wall of China, and referring to China ’s Net Nanny, or Internet censoring mechanism.

GFW

河蟹 héxiè (huh shih)

Literally “river crab.” A euphemism for Internet censorship. One of the main guiding philosophies of the Communist party is that of a “harmonious society,” a catchphrase frequently played upon, parodied, and ironically referenced on the Internet. Using the word “censorship” will often get your site flagged by Web hosts, so when a post, or an entire Web site, gets blocked or deleted, Chinese Internet users sarcastically say that it’s been “harmonized.” “Harmony” in Chinese, 和谐 héxié (huh shih) is similar in pronunciation to “river crab.” And since these euphemistic mentions of harmonization have become so ubiquitous that they themselves have become target keywords for getting censored, the Chinese have turned to “river crab” to stand in for harmonization.

功夫网 gōngfu wăng (gohng foo wahng)

A euphemism for censorship. Literally “kung fu Web,” but as with “river crab,” mentions of kung fu in blog posts often refer to censorship. You’ll notice that the pinyin gōngfu wăng starts with g, f, and w. GFW is the abbreviation for the Great Firewall.

草泥马 cǎonímǎ (tsow nee mah – cǎo rhymes with “cow”)

Grass mud horse. A made-up creature that has become an Internet sensation spawning everything from dolls to You-Tube videos to scholarly essays because its otherwise benign name sounds like the obscenity 操你妈 cào nǐ mā (tsow nee ma), meaning “Fuck you,” and because it has become a symbol of the fight against Internet censorship. The most popular online video about the creature, a parody of kiddie songs sung by a chipper chorus of children’s voices, explains that the grass mud horse lives in the 马勒戈壁 mălè gēbì (mah luh guh bee), which innocently looks like “The Ma Le Desert” but sounds just like 妈了个屄 mālegebī (mah luh guh bee), or “your mother’s a cunt.” Moreover, the grass mud horse is often threatened by river crabs (a euphemism for Internet censorship, see the héxiè entry on page 157). While a phenomenon that involves children’s voices singing “fuck you” and stick-figure online cartoons and dolls may seem juvenile, it neatly encapsulates the biggest issues surrounding the Chinese Internet. The authorities go on “anti-smut” campaigns to wipe out “inappropriate” material from the Internet; netizens come up with clever ways to evade the censors, like saying “grass mud horse” instead of “fuck you,” and maybe the censors start censoring the euphemism itself; but then netizens simply find yet another way to talk about the banned term or banned ideas, much the way “harmony” was used as a euphemism for “censorship” and then got censored, which spawned “river crab” in place of “harmony.” And in the end, it becomes clear that any attempt to censor this unwieldy beast is a losing battle.

五毛党 wǔ máo dǎng (ooh maow dahng)

Literally “half-yuan party.” People paid to influence Internet discussion by writing blog and BBS posts extolling the government’s position on various issues and also to write comments in response to other posts, arguing the government’s side of things. The payment structure for these people varies, but at the time this term was coined, the Hunan Province government was said to be paying a lump sum of six hundred yuan (around eighty or ninety dollars) plus an extra wǔ máo (half a yuan, about seven cents) per post.