Eveline Chao - Niubi! The Real Chinese You Were Never Taught in School

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.

ZF

Short for 政府 zhèngfǔ ( jung foo ), which means “government.” ZF is often used in place of the Chinese characters so as not to attract the attention of the government censoring mechanism, which can be triggered by sensitive keywords.

JC

Stands for 警察 jǐngchá ( jeeng cha ), which means “police” or “police officer.”

FB

Stands for 腐败 fǔbaì ( foo buy ). Means “corruption” in Chinese, and since corrupt officials are often wined and dined, people now ironically say fǔbaìto refer to going out to a fancy restaurant, going on vacation, or otherwise treating oneself to something nice.

FZL or 非主流 fēizhǔliú ( fay joo lew -liú rhymes with “pew”)

An “alternative” or “counterculture” person, usually rebellious and young with some sort of extreme style-elaborate hairstyle, piercings, unusual and edgy clothes, etc.-probably involving a great deal of influence from Japanese pop culture.

FQ or 愤青 fènqīng ( fen cheeng)

Angry youth, patriotic youth. Coined in Hong Kong during the 1970s to refer to young people agitating for reform in Chinese society, but now used on the Internet to refer to extremely patriotic (or depending on your view of them, nationalistic) Chinese with aggressive stances on a number of political issues. Very broadly speaking, fènqīngtend to be virulently anti-Japanese and militantly opposed to Taiwanese and Tibetan independence. The issues at stake are complicated, and fènqīngattitudes can seem contradictory to anyone not familiar with their nuances. They often seem to unconditionally defend anything the Chinese government does but are simultaneously highly critical of that government for what they feel is too soft a stance on the core issues mentioned above. And they may exhibit intense xenophobia and call westernized Chinese “race traitors” while also believing that China should eventually democratize. Critics of fènqīngderogatorily call them 粪青 fènqīng ( fen cheeng ), a play on words that is pronounced the same as fènqīngbut means “shit youth,” or just 粪 fènfèn ( fen fen ): “shit.”

人肉搜索 rén ròu sōusuǒ ( ren roe so swuh)

Literally “human flesh search engine.” Refers to the phenomenon of Internet users hunting down people in real life.

草根网民 cǎogēn wǎngmín ( tsow gehn wahng meeng)

Self-described ordinary citizens (in mainland China) who generally don’t have much of a voice, but who are slowly discovering the power of the Internet in helping to bring about social change (mainly in less sensitive areas like environmental protection, animal rights, labor rights, property rights, and rights for the disabled. Certain areas, however, cannot be touched without suffering consequences, such as attempting to organize politically). Literally “grassroots netizens” (a translation from the English).

晒黑族 shaìhēi zú ( shy hay dzoo)

Literally “those who expose injustice.” It refers to people on the Chinese mainland who use the Internet to help expose or publicize injustice: for example by mass blogging about an incident on many different Web servers in order to overcome possible online censorship. Every Web host seems to have different censoring criteria, and thus something that gets blocked or deleted on one host server may not get censored on another.

别太 CNN bié tài CNN(byih tie CNN)

Literally “don’t be too CNN,” meaning don’t lie or distort the truth. When antigovernment rioting broke out in Lhasa in 2008, a perceived pro-Tibet, anti-China bias in Western media coverage provoked a rising tide of nationalism and anger among many Chinese. Someone started a Web site called Anti-CNN.com, with the slogan “Don’t be too CNN!” and dedicated to showing examples of truth distortion in the Western media’s China reporting. For example, one of the most hotly disputed photos, taken from the CNN Web site, portrayed two Tibetan men running away from Chinese military trucks rumbling ominously into town, but Anti-CNN posted the uncropped version of the photo that showed a group of Tibetan rioters throwing stones at the vehicles. Anger about media bias centers on CNN in particular because not long after the riots the CNN commentator Jack Cafferty outraged the public by referring to the Chinese as “a bunch of goons and thugs” during an on-air discussion about Chinese imports to the United States. Several (extremely dirty, profanity-filled) Chinese rap songs about the evils of “being too CNN” are also circulating on the Internet.

树洞贴 shù dòng tiē ( shoo dohng tyih)

Literally “tree-hole post.” The Wong Kar Wai movie In the Mood for Love closes with the protagonist traveling to the remains of an ancient temple in Cambodia, finding a small hole among the ruins, and whispering into it. The scene is based on a (perhaps made-up) saying that in the past, people would find a small hole in a tree, hide a secret in it, and then seal the hole with mud, to be kept hidden forever. In online parlance, shù dòng tiērefers to a popular trend of posting secrets anonymously on the Internet-anything ranging from one’s salary to marital problems and beyond. People who do this are called 晒密族 shaìmì zú ( shy me dzoo ), literally “secret revealers,” or 晒客族 shaìkè zú, literally “information exhibitionists.”