Here is the interpretation of this phrase. The Chinese characters for the three words “grass-mud horse” is used to describe an imagined breed of horse, and Chinese netizens conveniently map it to lamas.

What makes this non-existent creature — grass-mud horse — so hilarious is these words are homophones of the household Chinese F word, the so-called national curse word of China. The disguised F word are cleverly woven into ordinary-looking video clips and stories. These seemingly innocent programs about the “grass-mud horse”, with the repetition of the cloaked F word for effect, became an act of netizen disobedience and a droll case of the cyber culture.

Citizens don’t not necessarily need collective or collaborated activities to maintain and expand their citizenship. As long as there is a binding social contract between the citizen and the authority, and a impartial arbitrary system to settle the disputes between the two parties, that society can be called a civil society.

Some comparable terms to civil society are slavery society and medieval society, in which there were no citizens and citizenship.

The fate of these recently unblocked sites (such as Wikipedia.org, Sourceforge.net etc.), are uncertain after the ending of the Olympic Games and the departure of most foreign Game visitors. Meanwhile, netizens on this site of the “Wall” can at least ease their use of VPN or other tricks to peek beyond the Wall.

At a panel discussion on the protest on Wednesday, officials from the provincial and local governments said local authorities in Weng’an County had failed to solve disputes over mines, demolition of homes for city building, relocation of residents for reservoir construction, reform of state-owned enterprises and many other issues.

“Some legitimate interests (of the people) were not effectively protected, and some people bore grievances,” said a Guizhou Daily report on Thursday.

The quotes are from a post in Xinhua, the state news agency.

The next question to ask, after admitting that some people’s legitimate interests were not cared for, is who was responsible and what to do next.

The official description at the press conference about a young girl, whose suspicious death triggered a riot last week in Wengan County, created another popular phrase among Chinese netizens — doing push-ups. You can read my post Rape or Push-up exercises to see what happened. The focused public attention on this event again contributed to the instant popularity of the phrase “doing push-ups”, suggesting some netizens’ disbelief about the official explanation that the young student drowned herself, instead of being raped and murdered.

The creative Chinese netizens have made some caricatures about the soy sauce phrase on the Internet.

The young man told the reporter: who cares, I am just buying some soy sauce.

The words read: Soy Sauce guides the People. Indicating an attitude of ‘detached involvement’ toward social events and issues

The riot or protest (you choose one word) was caused by the death of a fifteen year old girl who was a high school student in Wengan County. There are several versions about what actually happened, and I will start with the version from the official press conference (my rough translation):

At about 8 pm on June 21, Li Shufen (the victim) went out to dine with Liu Yantao and Chen Guanghan in the house of their mutual friend，a girl from another high school. Both Liu and Chen worked as interns of a local aluminum factory. At 11:30 pm, the group of four people went to the riverside to play. On the bridge, Li sat on the curb of the bridge and said, “Will I die if I jump over the bridge?” The other three persons present thought she was joking, and paid little attention to it, after casually persuading Li. Li went on, saying “If I didn’t die after the jumping, I will live a worthy life”, as Chen sat down chatting with the other girl, and Liu was doing some push-ups on the bridge. At 12:10 midnight, they heard the sound of water splashing, and found Li jumped into the water from over the bridge…

So according to the officials, the violence was organized by local gangsters and the mafia society harboring malicious intentions, along with the disgruntled families and relatives of the dead girl. Officials claimed in the news conference that all the three suspects are from rurual areas, and none of them have any connections with the party secretary of the county.

The description in the official report about the suspects doing push-ups instantly became a catch-phrase among Chinese netizens. The sudden popularity of the phrase “doing push-ups” suggests the some netizens’ doubt about the official news release, and the possible sightings of an on-going rape on the bridge by witnesses.

There are two versions on the Internet about what happened:

It is said the other girl at the scene is affiliated with some local official. Wang previously asked Li to help her cheat in an exam, but was refused by the victim, resulting the revenge by Wang. The local police dismissed the death of the girl as a suicide case, and released the suspects without thorough investigations. The angry students from both high schools (No. 4 and No. 1) demonstrated in the street, joined by locales and clashed with the police at several government buildings.

Another version goes like this:

The uncle of the girl tried to blackmail the three young persons who were with the girl when she committed suicide. He asked for a compensation of half of million Yuan (about $70,000) from them, but was refused. He then went to the local police station to report the crime, argued with and possibly attacked a policeman on duty. The uncle of the girl was beaten up and hospitalized by some people of unknown identities soon after he left the police station.

The highway from Guiyang, the capital city of Guizhou to Wengan County are said to be closed afterwards due to a “road cave-in”, according to some netizens who saw the road closure sign.

I am just writing here what I read on the Internet with a filtered and firewalled connection, and I don’t assume any responsibility for the accounts of these incident widely available on the Internet. A reader I am, and a reader I will continue to be.

Photos are from dwnews, and they have more on their site. More photos on this page.

Many netizens believe the blockage of Sourceforge.net is due to the political opinion expressed by one of its projects – Notepad++ which is hosted on Sourceforge. The whole site of Sourceforge became inaccessible in the Mainland China as a result of this censorship.

The coder of Notepad++ (NPP) got a master’s in Computer Engineering at University of Paris 7 (Université de PARIS 7), and a Bachelor’s in French Language at Taiwan. He is currently working in the field of information security. You can find his brief CV on this site in traditional Chinese.

As of the time writing this post, Sourceforge is still blocked. Strangely, its site by this address is untouched.