I'm sort of impressed. The New York Times has just put up an article about one of our favorite animals, the mud-grass horse. We were actually going to do this video for KTV Wednesday one of these days - but have been a bit hesistant since the language is pretty extreme....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/world/asia/12beast.html?hp

If you're up for a bit of foul language, this is the video clip. We all think it's hilarious, although Beijingers tend to have a sense of humour about this stuff. People in Shanghai might have a heart attack, since 牛逼 seems to be considered highly offensive there as well. Anyway, here is the video. You've been warned:

In the spirit of adding something to the discussion, I'll share a bit of office gossip now. We were looking at this the other day when Gail said something like. "But it's name is so funny." Turns out she actually thought it was a real animal. And the name was simply coincidental. I also just shared the video with someone else, and their first reaction was, "what a funny name for the animal."

I give it a couple of years before more people know the Alpaca by its fake Chinese name than its proper name. There's already merchandise, link courtesy of Danwei:

http://item.taobao.com/auction/item_detail-0db2-ec6aa99df4c9f8dcf6a3badd24f7cc29.jhtml

I'm so tempted to buy one and stick it in our office....