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.
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 fǔbaì to 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, fènqīng tend to be virulently anti-Japanese and militantly opposed to Taiwanese and Tibetan independence. The issues at stake are complicated, and fènqīng attitudes 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 fènqīng derogatorily call them 粪青 fènqīng (fen cheeng), a play on words that is pronounced the same as fènqīng but 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).