Word of the Week comes from the Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and 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.
周带鱼 (Zhōu Dàiyú): Cutlassfish Zhou
Nickname for the nationalistic and anti-American writer Zhou Xiaoping. Zhou, who is loose with facts and quick to slander, has been praised by President Xi Jinping for his “positive energy.”
Zhou Xiaoping earned his nickname during the crackdown on Big Vs in 2013. In an August 26 blog post, Zhou excoriated Charles Xue (Xue Manzi to his followers), the Weibo celebrity and Chinese-American businessman who was detained for “soliciting prostitutes,” only to appear on CCTV days later apologizing for his online behavior:
To promote sales of water purifiers, Xue Manzi claims China’s water is poisoned. Because of this, Zhoushan’s cutlassfish farms cannot sell anything, leaving countless fish farming households to face bankruptcy. Xue is guilty of a most terrible crime. Who will punish him?
薛蛮子为净水器促销，诋毁中国水质有毒，造成舟山带鱼养殖场滞销，当地无数养殖农户面临破产，罪大恶极，谁来追究？ [Chinese]
Cutlassfish, it turns out, cannot be farmed, and netizens will not let Zhou forget that point.
“Cutlassfish Zhou” is blocked from Weibo search results as of October 23, 2014, but searches for “Brother Cutlassfish” (带鱼哥) turn up several thousand comments.
Example:
文盲李世威: Because he refuted Cutlassfish Zhou point-by-point, Fang Zhouzi‘s Sina blog has been preemptively shut down. Soon we may not be able to see his Weibo or WeChat, either… (October 22, 2014)
方舟子因逐条反驳周带鱼所写正能量的文章,其新浪博客被预防性关闭,其微博、微信也可能即将看不了了…… [Chinese]
Want to learn more subversive netizen slang? Check out Decoding the Chinese Internet: A Glossary of Political Slang. Available for $2.99 in the Kindle, Google Play, and iTunes stores. All proceeds from the sale of this eBook support China Digital Times.
