Humor
Hoax dictionary entries about legendary obscene beasts
Meet the Grass Mud Horse (草泥馬), a rare animal that has become phenomenally popular in the past month.
The animal, whose name sounds like a common curse (), is the most famous of the Ten Legendary Beasts of Baidu, non-existent animals that were inserted into Baidu's user-editable encyclopedia. Although the majority are juvenile puns for curse words or genitalia, the collective editing process did manage to come up with a few clever descriptions.
Here are the rest:
* The Dafei Chicken (達菲雞): A strange bird that likes exercise. (打飛機, slang for "masturbate")
* The Chrysanthemum Silkworm (菊花蠶): A silkwork that feeds on chrysanthemum flowers instead of mulberry leaves. (菊花殘, an insult that means something like "bugger")
* The Midge Butterfly (雅蠛蝶): An exceedingly rare creature only found on the Tibetan plateau. (From やめて, Japanese for "stop it"; via imported porn)
* The Weishen Whale (尾申鯨): During his maritime adventures, Zheng He discovered this creature was hunted as the raw materials for women's underpants. (衛生巾, "sanitary napkin")
* The Jiba Cat (吉跋貓): A creature that lives in a dark, damp environment and competes for food with the White Tiger. According to historical records, the Jiba Cat flourished during the reign of the Zhengde Emperor. (, slang for "pubic hair")
* The Qianlie Crab (潛烈蟹): A legendary crab that once stopped up the Grand Canal. (From 前列腺, "prostate")
* The Crying Paddy Goose (吟稻雁): In the Kangxi era, a large goose dove into a certain field, damaging it and causing the local farmers to come down with a strange sickness. (From 陰道炎, "vaginitis")
* The Franco-Croatian Squid (法克魷, scientific name "Vai-te Foder"): A fierce species of squid originally inhabiting Europe and the Americas. (From the English-language curse " you")
* The Puremen (鶉鴿): A rare bird found only in Sichuan and Hunan; formerly found in the area that is now the Republic of Yemen. (From 春哥, a nickname used for Super Girl winner Li Yuchun among fans who claim, whether sincerely or ironically, that she's a man. Their catchphrase is 春哥純爺們, "Brother Chun is all man", which is where Yemen comes in)
And finally, in a nod to the editors of the encyclopedia, there's the Stork-Cat Ape (鸛狸猿) that inhabits Baidu County in Lanzhou. This entry pokes fun at Baidu administrators (管理員) who continually spar with the online pranksters and who ultimately deleted all of these entries.