The Complete Guide to Chinese Insults: Mandarin, Cantonese, and Everyday Street Slang

Catch up with The Complete Guide to Chinese Insults: Mandarin, Cantonese, and Everyday Street Slang. Explore the primary developments in full detail.

Nowhere is Chinese profanity more politically charged than on the monitored web. State automated filters across platforms like WeChat, Weibo, and Douyin block vulgar characters instantly. To survive digital purges, Chinese netizens invented Internet censorship euphemisms using homophones.

The most famous creation remains the Grass Mud Horse meme (草泥马, cǎonímǎ). Invented around 2009 and remaining an iconic cultural symbol, the phrase swaps the tones of cào nǐ mā. By shifting to third tones, cǎo (grass), ní (mud), mǎ (horse), netizens created a fictional alpaca-like creature that sounds almost identical to the maternal curse.

Netizens penned mock nature documentaries detailing how the heroic Grass Mud Horse defeated the evil "River Crab" (河蟹, héxiè), an exact homophone for "harmony" (和谐, héxié), Beijing’s official buzzword for state censorship. When users post pictures of alpacas today, everyone understands the unspoken message: a digital middle finger aimed directly at online censors.

Typing shorthand has also migrated to numbers and Latin characters:

• TMD: Shorthand for tā mā de, avoiding automated chat moderation in competitive online games.
• NMSL: Acronym for nǐ mā sǐle (你妈死了, "your mother is dead"), an aggressive phrase thrown around in multiplayer gaming lobbies and heated comment sections.
• 2B: Pronounced èr bī, a numeric substitute for shǎbī.