Watered weasel-ape.
灌狸猿 (guànlíyuán): watered weasel-ape
Sounds nearly the same as “administrator” (管理员 guǎnlǐ yuán). The watered weasel-ape originally referred to the administrators of Baidu’s online encyclopedia, where many mythical creatures, including the grass-mud horse, first appeared. (Entries about these animals were promptly deleted.) Now a watered weasel-ape is any Web administrator who censors vulgar or politically sensitive content.
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The Word of the Week comes from China Digital Space’s Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and frequently encountered in online political discussions. These are the words of China’s online “resistance discourse,” used to mock and subvert the official language around censorship and political correctness.
