Grass mud horse your mom

DANGER: Foul language ahead! Yippee!


My friend Dan pointed out an article in The New York Times about an online video that thwarts the Chinese Web censors.

The Times article makes the video out to be some kind of heroic rebellion against the dark red Commie forces - and I guess it is. But it is also just funny in an immature, clever sort of way.

Basically, it is a song performed by kids (at least it sounds that way), about a beast called the Grass Mud Horse (草泥马 cao3 ni2 ma3). This illustrates the importance of tones in Chinese. The same phrase said with different tones is a common (but super vulgar) insult: 操你妈 (cao4 ni3 ma1), which means "f*** your mother."

Of course, the Grass Mud Horse is not real and even if you said the tones that way, people would still think you meant the naughty phrase, since you are a laowai (lao3 wai4 老外 - "foreigner") and can't deal with tones anyway.

The video is funny because it talks about this mythical beast, the Grass Mud Horse, but the background film is just some kind of advertisement video for somebody's alpaca farm (photo caption is wrong. Oops.). Also, you can't really sing the tones, so basically what it boils down to is, you are watching slow-motion video of alpacas chewing stuff and jumping around, meanwhile these kids are cheerfully crooning "f--- your mom's c---" !

The thing about censorship becomes obvious (according to the NYT - I didn't know this), when the lyrics talk about "river crabs," 河蟹 (he2 xie4), which the grass mud horses fight and eventually drive out of their homeland, the Ma Le Gobi (desert presumably). Incidentally, this part 马勒戈壁 (ma3 le4 ge1 bi4), sounds like mother's c---. But "river crab" sounds like "harmony" ( he2 xie2 和谐), which apparently is the word the censors use to describe censoring. So many layers of euphemism and deception!

So here are the lyrics. Remember, everytime it says "grass mud horse," they are really saying FYM, and Ma Le Gobi means "your mother's c-." Oh and River Crab means censorship.

The intro is the kids saying: "I am a Grass Mud Horse, this is the Grass Mud Horse song!"

在那荒茫美丽马勒戈壁有一群草泥马
In the vast and desolate Ma Le Gobi desert, there is a herd of Grass Mud Horses

他们活泼又聪明，他们调皮又灵敏，他们由自在生活在那草泥马戈壁，他们顽强勇敢克服艰苦环境。
They are lively and intelligent, mischievous and sensitive. They live freely on the Grass Mud Horse Gobi, and tenaciously and bravely face the harsh environment there.

噢，卧槽的草泥马！噢，狂槽的草泥马！他们为了卧草不被吃掉 打败了河蟹，河蟹从此消失草泥马戈壁
Oh! The Grass Mud Horse lying down, the Grass Mud Horse going nuts! To protect their grass from being eaten, they defeated the River Crab. From then on, the River Crab disappeared from the Grass Mud Horse Gobi!

Getting medieval on a Sunday

Note: This is a version of a story I wrote that appeared in the Westword online. The editor thought this version was too much like a newspaper article, but I liked it so here it is! I think I am OK in posting it here since the quotes are different and the story is different, it is just about the same event.

Suburban swashbucklers

I spent Sunday learning the ancient art of the “spada a dui mani,” or two-handed Italian longsword, at a place called the Rocky Mountain Swordplay Guild in Wheat Ridge. A bastion of medieval fighting tactics in the heart of the Front Range, the RMSG offers a great full-body workout, a history lesson and a chance to wield some serious heavy metal.

Not your daddy’s D&D

Before you start thinking “frustrated Dungeon Masters screwing around,” let me introduce you to one Maestro Fiore dei Liberi da Premariacco. Dei Liberi was an Italian swordmaster who wrote a comprehensive combat manual in 1409 titled “Il Fior di Battaglio,” or “The Flower of Battle.”

Dei Liberi’s manuscript (of which only three copies are known to exist) forms the basis of the core classes at RMSG. In addition to longsword, the book lays out a complete fighting system including grappling, and fighting with daggers, lances and poleaxes. Lead instructor and school founder Roger Siggs has worked on translating the “Flower” as well as other medieval fighting treatises. These works make up the main teaching materials of what is known as historical European martial arts (HEMA), or Western martial arts (WMA).

Siggs, who has a Master’s degree in medieval history from University of California - San Diego (with a concentration in Byzantine military history), started RMSG in 2006 when he moved to Colorado. He became interested in HEMA while he was a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), but after 13 years he parted ways with the SCA in favor of a more structured and historical approach to getting medieval.

“Eventually I felt that the SCA didn’t fit my needs (it’s a club where fighting is an ancillary aspect of the organization) so I began working towards the development of WMA/HEMA as a distinct martial style, rather than relegating it to renaissance faires and that sort of thing,” Siggs said.

‘Ready … FIGHT!’

The daylong workshop started with a rousing game of Hooverball. This game – invented by President Herbert Hoover’s personal physician to get the portly commander-in-chief in fighting shape – involves two teams hurling a medicine ball over a net, volleyball-style. Players try to catch the ball and throw it back over the net (in this case a rope) so it lands without being caught. The act of chucking the 10-pound ball over the rope is a great warmup and activates the muscles that are needed to swing swords around (that is, pretty much all of them).

Then we grabbed the blades. Ssssshing! “Die, fiend!” Ahem, I get ahead of myself. Dei Liberi’s work outlines “dances,” or forms, with the longsword. These dances show the students how to transition between the various positions and guards. Then the class broke into pairs and began practicing “plays,” or brief snippets of combat, where one person attacks and the other performs a counterattack.

The students, all of who had varying degrees of experience in HEMA or other martial arts, did not fit into any particular mold, but all shared a love for things medieval.

“I’ve always pursued somewhat anachronistic hobbies,” said Douglas Wagner, 38, of Denver (shown fighting me in red pants at right). Wagner, a curatorial assistant in the Denver Art Museum’s Asian Art Department, also studies jousting and participates in jousting tournaments. In HEMA he found a way to express an old dream in new ways.

“With martial arts you find there is no such thing as an ultimate goal. The goal is to always improve,” he said. “I get to become that vision of myself as a Renaissance or medieval character that I’ve imagined myself to be since I was a kid.”

Actor and stage combat director Benaiah Anderson, 32, said he studies at RMSG to improve his martial arts skill and get ideas for his work. However, he doesn’t use the material directly, even in his current role in “Richard III” at the Denver Center for Performing Arts.

“The audience wants an exciting visual story, not the most direct way to kill your opponent,” Anderson said.

Siggs, a black belt in aikido, judo and kyokushinkai karate, gleefully directed the controlled melees.

“I’m gonna smack him down, then I’m gonna hit him, then I’m gonna hit him again,” said Siggs, demonstrating a parry and two swift sword strokes.

Looking on, class participant and acupuncturist R. Scott Malone said the action reminded him of something.

“It’s like a steel bitch slap,” Malone said.

An important question

After minutes of contemplation, I finally thought of the most profound and deep question I could ask Siggs about his art: Who would win a fight, Fiore dei Liberi or Bruce Lee?
“Personally, I’d have to say Fiore,” Siggs said. “We know that he fought five duels at the sword with only regular clothing and no armor.”

However, Siggs does cede the Little Dragon one point:

“Bruce Lee is famed not just for movies, but also for his development of Jeet Kun Do – his method of martial arts – which posits the idea that all fighting is systemic and by following a series of core principles, you can gain ability and skill in any situation,” Siggs said. “Amazingly enough, this is the same mindset Maestro Fiore details for us, but 600 years earlier.”

Siggs said that people who are interested in the material would do well in the class. But, if your only goal is to be a “bad ass,” then the class is not for you, since there is a lot of hard work involved.

“Personal development, alongside of butt-kicking, is really the primary focus of our work,” he said.

Chinese grafitti

For some reason, a couple of Chinese poems remain clear in my mind even now, 10 years since I have been in China.

Two of the poems I remember are dueling poems. The first one was composed by one of the top Zen Buddhist monks of the 7th century. The other was written by a lowly cleaning dude at the temple, who turned out to be the monk's rival for the much vaunted position of Sixth Patriarch.

The tale of Hui Neng (慧能 Hui4 Neng2) begins with a young lad (Hui Neng, A.D. 632-713) who grows up very poor and sells firewood to support himself and his single mom. His name was Lu (庐 lu4) at the time (Hui Neng, meaning "intelligent ability," became his monastic name later). One day on a firewood delivery run Lu (I'll just call him Hui Neng now) ran into a dude reading outside of a small inn. He asked the guy what he was reading and where he was from. Turns out he was reading the Diamond Sutra (金剛經 jin1 gang1 jing1), a Buddhist scripture that teaches awareness of the mind and its various ways of tricking you.

So Hui Neng (now 24) learns that his guy was studying at the Huang Mei Temple in Hubei Province, and he decides to go there to study. Long story short, Hui Neng meets the head of the temple, the 5th Patriarch (meaning the 5th Zen Buddhist master since the religion arrived in China), whose name was Hong Ren (弘忍 Hong2 Ren4).

Hong Ren says "what do you want, kid?" and Hui Neng is like "I am from Ling Nan, I want to study Buddhism." So Hong Ren tests him and says "What makes you think a peasant from Ling Nan can learn Buddhism?" Hui Neng says "Men are from the north or the south, but the true nature of Buddha knows no north or south." Hong Ren is like "whaaaaat?" and is super impressed, but in order to keep the 700 unruly monks from getting angry about a young punk coming from the countryside and gaining monk status just-like-that, he makes Hui Neng a laborer, cleaning up after the other monks and threshing rice.

Eight months later, Hui Neng is still happily cleaning up after the other monks. One day Hong Ren announces that he wants everyone to write a verse displaying their understanding of Buddhism. That night, the senior monk Shen Xiu (神秀 Shen2 Xiu4) (who realizes the poem thing is a test to see who is worthy to become Hong Ren's successor) puts a lot of thought into it (big mistake in Zen Buddhism). He sneaks down in the middle of the night and writes - on the wall of the temple - this verse:

身是菩提树，心如明镜台，时时勤拂拭，莫使有尘埃
(shen1 shi4 pu2 ti2 shu4, xin1 ru2 ming2 jing4 tai2
shi2 shi2 qin2 fu2 shi4, mo4 shi3 you3 chen2 ai1)

which means:

"The body is the Tree of Enlightenment, the mind is like a bright mirror stand.
Always be diligent in cleaning it, and allow no dust to land."

All the monks see it in the morning and are all like "whoa, that's deep." Except for Hong Ren, who just sort of looks at it and says nothing. Then, Hui Neng hears about the ruckus in the hall and heads over for a look. Upon seeing the verse, he asks Hong Ren if he too can have a crack at a Buddhist verse. He gets permission and ad libs the following ...

菩提本无树,明镜亦非台;本来无一物,何处惹尘埃
(pu2 ti2 ben3 wu2 shu4, ming2 jing4 yi4 fei1 tai2
ben3 lai2 wu2 yi1 wu4, he2 chu4 re3 chen2 ai1)

which means:

"Enlightenment has no tree, the bright mirror has no stand.
Originally there was nothing, so where can the dust even land?

... showing his really deep and innate understanding of Zen, and he gets the patriarch's robe, thus becoming the Sixth Patriarch! Whereupon he is immediately sent into hiding for 15 years with Cantonese pig farmers so he won't get attacked by a mob of furious monks.

The End

Note: I really like the phrase 本来无一物, (ben3 lai2 wu2 yi1 wu4). Literally it means, "In the beginning, there was not one thing." It sums up the universe nicely in like 5 characters. 物 (wu4) is a nice word, too, because it can mean any "thing." Chinese philosophy somtimes refers to the 万物 (wan4 wu4) or "myriad creatures," but you can also take it to mean "matter" in general so he is kind of hinting at the pre-Big Bang void. Maybe. Anyway I like it.

What's the 419?

This is the world premiere of a video I made to go along with my rap song about getting spam e-mail. I wrote this rap during a Williston (Vt.) Selectboard meeting that I was reporting on a couple years ago. (It was a slow meeting). It was fun making the vid! The title is "What's the 419?" as in the 419 Internet scams. You know, where the Nigerian banker says if you give him your contact info they will send you like 50 million bucks? 419 is the section of the Nigerian penal code dealing with money scams apparently.

I am now bracing myself to become in Internet superstar. Here goes...

Animal House: Holes in birds, stalking the wild ass and other tales from the NAVC

I have just returned from Orlando, Fla., where I was attending the North American Veterinary Conference. The conference is one of the big veterinary gatherings in the United States, and as you can imagine A) has nothing to do with Chinese translation and B) is totally zany.

My job was to report on the various sessions and to make contacts in the veterinary world.

The main focus of the conference is the "scientific programs," which are various classes and lectures for vets to get continuing education credit and learn from some experts in their field. As a non-veterinarian, I found some of the talks absolutely mystifying, and others were really interesting or gross, while some were just hilarious.

I found that one big difference between veterinarians and laypeople (me) is in viewing pictures of animals. For instance, when shown pictures of open wounds and dead animals in various stages of being necropsied (the animal version of an autopsy), the vets will nod and be interested, while I am trying to suppress a gag reflex. But when shown cute animal pictures of fluffy kitties and puppies in silly situations, they all go: "Aaaawwwwww!" meanwhile I am rolling my eyes.

Animal exotica
One of the subjects I explored while at the conference was the world of "exotics," which includes birds, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals like ferrets. I took one class called "Shell repair in Chelonians," which was presented by Dr. Greg Fleming, a veterinarian with Disney World. A chelonian is a turtle or tortoise, and Fleming said people often bring in the animals to his clinic after they (the chelonians) have been run over by cars.

Triage is the first step. If the spine has been broken he said there is little hope. Turtles have a strange, primordial nervous system, and their back legs will continue to move reflexively without a connection to the spinal cord. However their quality of life would be pretty low and he just euthanizes them.

"Basically those guys are toast," were his exact words.

But surprisingly, even if large pieces of the shell have been broken or cracked off, he can still repair many of them. You are probably thinking "epoxy" right now, but that just seals in any infection. The trick is to drill screws into the shell and wire the pieces together. Flushing out the wounds is also important for the first week or so, but make sure the animals are positioned correctly.

"You kind of have to hold the dude upside down," the Alberta, Canada, native said.

The avian programs were also pretty cool. "Case Study: The Screaming Parrot" was a tempting selection, but I passed it up (another one I skipped was "The Vomiting Cat"), and instead went to the bizarre and intriguingly titled "There is a Hole in my Bird."

Basically this class was about birds who pluck out their own feathers. The interesting thing is, I go to these classes thinking people know everything about the subject. And while they might know the most of anyone about something, the actual body of knowledge on the subject has as many holes as the self-plucking bird. That is not a criticism of the doctors, it is just that there is tons we don’t know, especially about animal behavior.

"Feather destructive behavior" is different from "feather picking," but essentially they are both pretty common problems with pet birds. Why do they do it? Nobody knows for sure! But Dr. Natalie Antinoff (who was a great presenter) had some good ideas. One reason could be that the bird is nuts. They are smart and live really long lives - in small cages - hence they occasionally go insane. Another possible reason is disease. She talked about one bird who picked out all of these feathers on one part of its body for no apparent reason. But when it finally died she did a necropsy and found a huge testicular tumor, which was located right around the site of the picking.

Yeah, there were pictures of that. Giant testicular tumors in a splayed out bloody parrot -- not pretty. But other birds plucked themselves in a certain area and it turned out they had some medical issue internally right under where they were picking.

Stress is another cause. Take the case of Forbes, a 20-year-old African Grey. After Forbes' owner moved the bird from his original place in the house, Forbes started freaking out and plucked himself bare. Then one of the veterinary technicians was bird-sitting for him, and pointed out that there was a giant statue of an eagle sitting right outside Forbes' window! The owner took away the statue and the bird stopped picking since it was no longer crapping itself in fear every day.

That case was a demonstration of why, as Dr. Antinoff said, "I don't reach for the Prozac with every single bird." (She was talking about giving it to the bird.)

Some people think it is due to allergies (don't give them benadryl though because "histamine is not the allergic mediator in birds" – nobody knows what is), but it could also just be a weird habit, like people biting their nails. The problem is that their "flock" is a couple of humans who don't know anything about them except they are cute and fun.

"There are things we can't teach them, because we don't have beaks," she said.

Wild-ass beasts
The place I work for only deals with companion animals, but I just could not pass up this class: "Capturing and collaring the Asiatic Wild Ass."

The presenter was an Austrian I believe, and he was talking about his adventures in Mongolia and parts of Asia and the Middle East trying to capture these endangered wild asses (they look like donkeys) and put satellite collars on them. He must have said "wild ass" like 15 times in the first 3 minutes, and of course being fairly immature I was holding back snickers. But he said it like it was an adjective, like you might say "that was a wild-ass party last night." However, he started showing amazing pictures of the central Asian steppe and I was entranced. Although I did kind of chuckle at one picture, which he described thusly: "that's obviously a male."

He said the job is not very glamorous and not everyone should attempt it. Lots of mosquitoes and lots of waiting around for the animals to show up. It still sounded really cool, though. He talked about how he created a remote control tranquilizer gun using parts out of a video supply catalog, a Sony watchman, a CO2 rifle and the automatic door-lock mechanism from a BMW (used to activate the trigger).

"It's surprising, actually, what you can bring into other countries and no one notices," he said.

Some of the risks are pretty gnarly (the worst thing is having vehicle problems), and you should always have a backup plan when stalking wild ass. In addition to cars or planes breaking down, injury and illness, some of the governments are also kind of unstable. At one point he said: "When you hear your name on Iranian radio, you know things have gone badly wrong."

There are other hazards, too. This guy wrote a paper called “Human Exposure to Wildlife Capture Drugs.” Oh, and when the wild ass is in the initial stages of sedation it starts pacing all over the place, so you are supposed to stand in front of it and when it rams into you, you “grab the ears and thrown them down.” Don’t worry it is perfectly safe. For the wild ass, that is.

Good times

I wound up writing about an economic symposium and also a series of talks on animal forensics, which was awesome. For that I got to interview Dr. Melinda Merck, the ASPCA veterinarian who brought down Michael Vick by proving the various terrible ways his fighting dogs were killed. I also interviewed one of the 13 forensic entomologists in the country, Dr. Jason Byrd.

Basically forensic entomology is using information about insects to figure out how long a body has been decomposing for. This guy was cool. I asked him how he got into the field and he said that he had two interests in life: forensic science and entomology, and he was able to study them together and voila. His great quote was: "A carcass is the singles bar of the fly world." Not only were there pictures of dead animals in his presentation, we also got to see human bodies in various stages of decomposition and being eaten by bugs.

Later, when I asked him about how he got into animal forensics, he said that although people in the field of human forensic science don't grow callous to the crimes they study, they do become somewhat desensitized to the human bodies they see. But people hurting animals is a different story, and when he was approached by Dr. Merck he wanted to help.

"We don't have some of the minimum defense mechanisms when we hear about animal cruelty," he said. "Some cases really shocked me."

Oh, I almost forgot! I went to Downtown Disney, the free part of Disney World, and I ran in a 5K! I figured I should use my increased blood oxygen levels (from living in Denver) and try to beat my previous 5K record. I did it, finishing in under 30 minutes! It was not hard to beat my previous time, which was in 2000, with Columbia friend and "innerer Schweinehund" blogger Brian Morrissey. I was about 50 pounds heavier, hung over and had gotten about 3 hours of sleep after a wild night in Hoboken, N.J.

OK, there it is: the whole experience in a nutshell. Next time I will head to the AAHA conference in Phoenix in March. Stay tuned for more veterinary madness!

Kung Fool

One of my favorite Chinese sayings is: 大智若愚 (da4 zhi4 ruo4 yu2), which basically means "very wise people appear to be fools." I like it because sometimes I do dumb things, and then I can say that to myself to feel better.

It is actually part of a larger saying: 大勇若怯，大智若愚 (da4 yong3 ruo4 qie4, da4 zhi4 ruo4 yu2) "A great hero may appear timid, the wise may appear foolish." So it is saying that people with great talent or great characteristics are often not recognized for what they are.

It also means that a truly wise or brave person does not go around saying how brave or wise they are. A wise person knows that, as Confucius said:
三人行，必有我师焉。(san3 ren2 xing2, bi4 you3 wo3 shi1 yan1)
择其善者而从之, (ze2 qi2 shan4 zhe3 er3 cong2 zhi1)
其不善者而改之。(qi2 bu4 shan4 zhe3 er3 gai3 zhi1)

"Of any three people I walk with, one will be my teacher.
I can learn from their good characteristics,
And I can change myself by noticing their faults."

(Or as we liked to joke in grad school: 三人喝，必有我醉。(san3 ren2 he1, bi4 you3 wo3 zui4). "Of any three people I drink with, I will definitely get drunk.")

The point being that you can learn from eveyone you meet in some way or another, so it does not pay to pretend you know everything. Hence, you may appear to be dumb if you are actually listening to say, the Information Technology person at work talk about opening and closing Microsoft Word, BUT she might say something you don't know such as "The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds," which you would not catch if you just said "I know" and left the meeting.

Another word besides "愚 yu4" for "dumb," or "idiot" include this one, which caused me some grief at first, but now I embrace it: 笨 (ben4). Yep, my first name in Chinese means dummy. But, that's OK. As a kid I called myself Benjy, which would equate to 笨妓, ben4 ji4, or "dumb prostitute." Naughty cross-translations are always good for a laugh at parties. And if the truly wise appear as fools, then surely those who appear (via their name) as "dumb prostitutes" are practically omniscient, no?

Tuantuan & Yuanyuan - Communist Youth League Operatives

They're incredibly cute and fluffy and everybody loves them. That's why they make --- the perfect spies.

Recently China sent a pair of adorable pandas named Tuantuan and Yuanyuan over to Taiwan as a goodwill gift between the two countries (or one country and one rogue province, depending on how you look at it).

All the news reports are saying how the pandas names together mean "reunion." And this is true. In Chinese, their names are 团团 (tuan2 tuan2) and 圆圆 (yuan2 yuan2), and the word 团圆 (tuan2 yuan2) means "reunion," therefore suggesting that the pandas could be a catalyst for China and Taiwan to reunite into one China (which even a whole platoon of pandas would have difficulty achieving).

HOWEVER, a homonym for 团圆 is 团员 (tuan2 yuan2), which is short for "member of the Chinese Communist Youth League!" (中国共产主义青年团 zhong1 guo2 gong1 chan3 zhu3 yi4 qing1 nian2 tuan2). The CCYL is for people ages 14-28, and is a kind of precursor to joining the actual Communist Party. Although many high school graduates are members, most of them do not actually go on to join the Party. Most pandas are not Party members either.

But this panda duo could be moles, sent to Taiwan in order to recruit and cultivate a new CCP Youth League presence within the borders of the renegade territory! Ingenious, really.

Another important question is "why do they always give pandas names with one character repeated twice?" Actually, Chinese tend to do this with all of their animal friends. In fact, I once met and played with a real panda! Her name was Didi, and she lives at Wolong Panda Preserve in Sichuan.

When I lived in Beijing in the late '90s, pets were just starting to become popular. I remember one guy in an outdoor kungfu class I was taking had a dog named "Ben Ben." Oh, it was the source of endless fun for the other classmates.

People get double-character nicknames too, especially young people. It is a sign of affection and sounds cute. If they just called the pandas Tuan and Yuan, it would be far less amusing.