Legend of the Grass Mud Horse 草泥马

So, the latest craze sweeping the internet is the legend of the 草泥马 / cao ni ma ('grass mud horse'), an alpaca like creature, fighting censorship in China. I have been keeping myself amused reading all about Male and Gebi...

Growing up, I didn't hear my parents swear a great deal but even when they did I didn't know they were. I mean, I didn't know the literal meaning of the words they were saying and it wasn't till much much later that I did! so when I read this (Modern Chinese profanity) I was very shocked and surprised... (warning: not for the easily offended or prudish). It also explains why there is a Canon G7 and G9 (and now G10) camera but no G8.

Anyway back to the 草泥马 / cao ni ma (which sounds like another phrase I heard my father say when he was driving (but that's another story)) I think the plushies are adorable... pity it's not a real animal, but that's not the point, is it? Of course the YouTube videos/songs are much funnier if you understand Mandarin and the double meanings of the words but the China Digital Times site explains it well. I have re-posted the lyrics and video (second video here) from their site.

There is a herd of Grass Mud Horses
In the wild and beautiful Ma Le Desert
They are lively and intelligent
they are fun-loving and nimble
They live freely in the Ma Le Desert
They are courageous, tenacious, and overcome the difficult environment

Oh lying down Grass Mud Horse
Oh running wild Grass Mud Horse
They defeated river crabs in order to protect their grass land
River crabs forever disappeared from Ma Le Desert

在那荒茫美丽马勒戈壁
有一群草泥马，
他们活泼又聪明，
他们调皮又灵敏，
他们自由自在生活在那草泥马戈壁，
他们顽强勇敢克服艰苦环境。

噢，卧槽的草泥马！
噢，狂槽的草泥马！
他们为了卧草不被吃掉 打败了河蟹，
河蟹从此消失草泥马戈壁

Read more about it here:

New York Times

International Herald Tribune

China Digital Times

Male and Gebi who happen to come from the desert called Malegebi 马勒和歌碧

Shanghaiist

DanWei

Dan Wei 2

Wikipedia entry about the 10 Mythical Chinese creatures, including the Fa Ke You, a squid.

Chinese Description of the cao ni ma

IOC's internet censorship deal with China

The international Olympic committee (IOC)'s not-so-secret deal with China about internet censorship. Read all about it here.

People making up sh|t about China

I'm getting really really tired of all the Western countries being ignorant and making up sh|t about China. It really is a joke.

I just stumbled across a Facebook group. This is what it said

Chat rooms monitored. Blogs deleted. Search results re-routed. Websites blocked.

Try to search for blacklisted sites like Amnesty International in China and you will get an error message or be re-routed to an authorised government site.

The same thing happens when you search for terms like democracy, Tibet, Taiwan or Tiananmen Square – timed out, connection reset.

The Great Firewall
That's Internet censorship, China's 'Golden Shield Project'. The Government is watching you.

Behind what has been dubbed the 'Great Firewall of China' citizens can be imprisoned for sending emails, posting blogs or passing on information deemed to be sensitive, a threat to national sovereignty or a state secret.

In China the Internet has become a new frontier in the fight for human rights.

Thousands of Internet police
China has reportedly employed between 30,000 and 50,000 special Internet police who, with the aid of Western-provided technology, read private emails, conduct surveillance, remove blogs and block banned websites.

On screen, Internet users looking at China's most popular websites will see a cartoon cyber-police officer appear every half hour. The cartoon officer reminds them not to view censored material.

In Internet cafés users have to give their full name and an identification card before a using computer. Many cafés, which are subject to random checks, have installed extra censorship software to make sure their customers don't break the rules.

New rules are regularly created to keep up with the pace of the Internet. In January this year licence agreements came into force dictating – in reaction to video-sharing sites like YouTube – that all video material on the web must be approved by a government regulatory body.

Breeding fear
There is no list of what is censored or what authorities are looking for – it's kept deliberately vague and is constantly updated – this instills fear and uncertainty in Internet surfers in the hope that, on top of all the other controls, they will censor themselves.

China is helped by the Internet companies – global giants Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft, and Chinese companies such as Alibaba and Baidu – who have signed a pledge with the Government, the contents of which have not been made public.

The pledge allows the companies to operate in China, but only under conditions that involve censorship of their users.


For more information, go to: http://www.uncensor.com.au/

OMG. Please. Blocked or banned for writing about Taiwan or Tibet? If that were true I would've been banned many times already (rolleyes).

Anyone living in China for longer than 2 weeks and with half a brain would've already found a way to circumvent TGF by use of a proxy or VPN or other means.

China is NOT the only country with internet censorship (get your facts straight people!!)

I used an internet cafe when I first moved here. I also paid for in-room broadband internet in our hotel. They did not ask me for ID or a passport or anything. The only asked me for a refundable deposit.

Cartoon police officer? WTF? I've never seen this! Where do people even get this information from?

Yes YouTube has been blocked (and I admit that sucked) but it was never for longer than a few days at a time, it's never been constantly blocked. Right now it's working fine.

Yes I agree that human rights issues in China stinks, blocking/firewalling websites stinks particularly ones like Wikipedia or innocent blogs or Flickr (!!!) but geez, I just can't stand how the world thinks that China is the WORST country right now and all it does is BAD things and every OTHER country is so great by comparison and is 100% totally INNOCENT and GOOD in every way, shape and form.

PUH-LEEZE, people!

When I read dumb things such as the above example, all it shows me is the stupidity and ignorance of the authors.

Service and Delivery in China

Service and Delivery in China = fast and cheap/free
Service and Delivery in Australia = slow and expensive.

Mike and I are both amazed at how fast things are here in terms of service and delivery!

* We applied to have internet installed on a Friday afternoon. On Sunday morning someone came around with the modem and everything and installed it for us - free of charge! In Australia we'd have to wait about 2 weeks and wait for them to send you the modem in the mail.

* We applied to have cable/satellite tv installed and called at about 2pm in the afternoon. At 6:30pm they were at our place installing it. In Australia it'd probably take a week or so and they'd probably be slow as.

* We had a problem with our plumbing, specifically the kitchen sink would not drain. We called our landlord who called a plumber who was here within an hour. Fixed it, and left. In Australia - probably a week's wait and then be told they couldn't fix it and we'd need someone else to come out a week later to finish off the job.

* I buy Chinese herbal medicine from my doctor. They cook it for me and deliver it to me the same day for 10 RMB (about $1.50).

Delivery for almost anything is free or very inexpensive and they come to your house to do it all! which brings me to my next point.

Our Landlord

One of the nicest people I have met in Shanghai. He gave us a discount for paying our rent in 3-monthly installments instead of the usual monthly arrangement. He arranged to have furniture and appliances in another apartment swapped with those in ours. He installed a special laundry drying rack (which can be lowered) on our balcony free of charge. When I asked him where to go to pay our bills - he just took them off me and went and paid them for me! I couldn't believe that someone could be so nice. Also, he has the same accent and similar voice as my grandfather and when he spoke to me on the phone for the first time and called my name I freaked out! I thought it was my grandfather calling me!

... which brings me to my next point. The air conditioner in our living room still isn't working properly. I've set it to the lowest temp. of 16º and it's cool if you stand right underneath it, but I'm about 2-3m away from it and I've been sweating all afternoon. It feels more like a fan, a fan that is churning hot air around rather than nice cool air you are supposed to get with A/C so tomorrow morning I'm giving our landlord a call! Humph.

"I'm melting, I'm melting..."

China: Internet censorship from HELL! Flickr blocked.

I am soooo angry words cannot express how mighty pissed off I am to find one of my favourite websites, flickr.com is now blocked in China too.

Last night I accidently typed in flicker.com without realising my mistake and saw that some cybersquatter is trying to sell it, and rejected the latest offer of US$600,000. What an idiot.

Meanwhile, after I realised my mistake and went to the correct site, strangely, none of the images were displaying. None At All. Not my own, none in a search, NONE. I immediately assumed it was my computer or ISP being slow or something and just left it....

...to try again this morning, to find that it was still like that. I got suss. I got very, very suss. I went to my trusty Shanghai sites to find that it had gotten blocked by China. Interesting, it is also blocked in parts of the Middle East. If you do a google search you can read more about it.

Geez!!

As if it isn't bad enough that every time I find something through google for a wikipedia article I have to circumvent their blocking by going to answers.com first, and as if it isn't bad enough that I even have to go through another site to access this blog, my own blog, (and any other blogger blog, as well as livejournal blogs), but now I can't even view my own photos on Flicker!

Bastards.

There are always ways around this though. It's just a pain having to use them but better than nothing.

Someone has already invented a Firefox plug-in to view flickr here.

Why I like Flickr

* I love photography. I love looking at the beautiful, awe-inspiring photos from people's everyday lives, holidays, events, everything. I have only a handful of pictures up there but always planned to put more up when I got my next computer upgrade.
* I love that I can search for random things and find a RECENT picture of it. If I go through google images I have to search through tonnes of crap to find anything half decent of what I'm looking for. Some examples of things I searched for... when I was planning our wedding I looked for bouquet, cake, invitation, dress, veil, etc ideas. When I am holiday planning I liked to search for hotels as I can actually see what the room looks like inside for real, not some fake glossy brochure type outdated photo that is on the hotel's website. I like to look for places to go to, or things to do. I love I can search for almost any keyword and turn up a bunch of really interesting photos on that topic.

I just realised I don't know if that plug-in works for Mac or not. If it doesn't I'm going to cry.. booo hooo... :(

PS - if you are interested (which I doubt you would be unless you are in China), you can read more here on the flickr website for updates.

Darn diddly arn darn crap!

Aahh it had to happen sooner or later. China has banned blogger/blogspot right now so I cannot even view my own blog. Luckily I was already prepared for this and found out I can use pkblogs.com to view and edit my site. It's a bit of a hassle but better than nothing!

Let's hope the big bad censors hurry up and go away and find better things to worry about than someone's blog. It's a bit unfair to censor a whole blog site (with thousands of blogs on it) just because of a few worrying ones, don't you think? :(