The Artful Jurist

In China, there’s nothing even remotely like the U.S. First Amendment to provide a great big blanket protection to most speech. Here, even what’s sometimes called “indecent speech” can fall under that protection. Not so in China. But that hasn’t stopped some creative cybernauts from pushing the envelope with what might amount to a linguistic loophole.

I’m talking about an Internet phenomenon called the Grass-Mud Horse. It’s a video, first appearing on a Chinese web page and now available on YouTube, whose children’s song soundtrack belies its subversive and foul-mouthed protest against China’s censorship. You see, much of what’s in the song, including the name “Grass-Mud Horse,” are words that are homonyms for other words with more pornographic meanings. Just like the English words “boar” and “bore” are completely different words but sound the same when pronounced, “Grass-Mud Horse” has its own homonyms that, if not couched in the children’s song meaning, would trigger automatic censorship by the Chinese government computers that scan cyberspace for offensive language.

Apparently, the both naughty-and-nice horse has gained quite a bit of celebrity, reportedly drawing more than a million viewers on line.