“The grass-mud horse is an example of something that, in China’s authoritarian system, passes as subversive behavior. Conceived as an impish protest against censorship, the foul-named little horse has not merely made government censors look ridiculous, although it has surely done that.
It has also raised real questions about China’s ability to stanch the flow of information over the Internet — a project on which the Chinese government already has expended untold riches, and written countless software algorithms to weed deviant thought from the world’s largest cyber-community.
Government computers scan Chinese cyberspace constantly, hunting for words and phrases that censors have dubbed inflammatory or seditious. When they find one, the offending blog or chat can be blocked within minutes.
Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, who oversees a project that monitors Chinese Web sites, said in an e-mail message that the grass-mud horse “has become an icon of resistance to censorship.”
” NewYork Times
After "Grass Mud Horse" and "River Crab" becomes famous, there are also other "mistery beasts".
鹳狸猿（guan li yuan）sounds like "internet administrators"
尾蜃鲸 （wei shen jin）sounds like（sanitary towel）
达菲鸡 （da fei ji）sounds like “male masturbation”
法克鱿（fa ke you）sounds the same as “F*** YOU”
oh! That is very intereting! Actually, I think these words are so popular in China is because the huge number of internet users.
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