Male and female idols of the Chinese pornospheregovernment crackdowns. A movement of Grass Mud Horse (Cao Ni Ma) activists started to
playfully criticize the government policy to have all computers sold in the People’s Republic
of China installed with Greendam Youth Escort filtering software. The peculiarly “unsexy” ani-
mal with stained yellow teeth became an Internet meme in 2009 and was used extensively as
a defiant symbol that counteracted widespread Internet censorship. The Grass Mud Horse is
supposedly a species of the alpaca, its name being derived from cao ni ma, whose near- equivalent
word translates as “fuck your mother.” The greatest enemy of the Grass Mud Horse is the “river
crab” whose name resembles hexie meaning “harmony,” referring to government censors who
wish to create a “harmonious society.” The Grass Mud Horse spurred people’s imagination,
as was evidenced in thousands of image-collages and mockumentaries that appeared online.
The fad spread like a benign virus and was later popularized as a stuffed animal, an activist icon-
turned commodity. The popular theme song of the Grass Mud Horse was banned by The State
Administration of Radio, Film, and Television in March 2009, along with the official blocking
of the entire meme itself.
The animal figure then became an all-encompassing strategic icon of political dissent, in
general, as it became openly used by artists and activists who joined pro-democracy movements.
Ai Wei Wei, for instance, who is still one of China’s most influential artists and social commen-
tators, has uploaded several self-portraits with the banned symbol. While the movement of the
Grass Mud Horse has meanwhile lost its oppositional force, it has taught a new generation of
netizens to proudly navigate banned materials, or even to openly poke fun at the ongoing war
on pornography.
In a 2013 news article about the porn wars, Tyler Roney explains that government calls for
the hiring of Chief Pornography Identification Officers (porn censors) have also tended to gar-
ner large groups of opportunistic applicants, but the chosen officers always meet with significant
opposition and are sometimes ridiculed by other citizens (Roney 2013). For instance, when it
came to light that almost all officers are married women, netizens posted mock exam questions
for these “mommies.” For example, “Why did CCTV decide to put a mosaic on Michelangelo’s
sculpture of David,” and “How many sexually explicit words are there in this sentence” (Zhai
and Lin 2013; Wang 2014)? Netizens poked fun at the bureaucratic and simplistic mindset of
government censors and contested the climate of zero tolerance, showing that their sexual
knowledge has advanced far beyond those hindsight attempts at erasure.
The Japanese sex bomb as teacher
Web users have become used to accessing porn collections as everyday stimuli to sexual desires
and relations. As stated before, the male-oriented pornographic landscape in China is mostly
dominated by Japanese idols and idealtypes. The local markets of Japanese adult videos in greater
China (China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) have flourished for several decades as bootleggers have
responded carefully to localized tastes by mixing selections and by providing subtitles (Wong
and Yau 2009). Historically, the videos were sold in ad hoc retail outlets after products were
acquired from underground and bankruptcy markets that bypassed the obscenity standards set
by the Japanese NEVA (Nihon Ethics of Video Association). The NEVA would prescribe blur-
ring of genital areas and pubic hair, but Chinese porn users preferred unaltered versions of these
newly subtitled movies.
The male interviewees confirmed that they were mostly hooked on Japanese pornography
and porn stars rather than either Chinese or Western stars. In probing the reasons why they
want Japanese stars, one could point to obvious explanations of easy access to overseas markets
and the stigmatization of local products and sex workers. Yang explains that he gets “educational