The best part about this, of course, is that it's set to the Chinese version of the Smurfs theme song. I've done this at karaoke.

@lan_dawei - sure. but it's no worse than a lot of Eddie Murphy's stand-up, and there's a huge difference between not airing something on prime time television and forceably removing it from the Internet at large. So still a totally lame move by the Chinese government. That and keeping the proper character for cao4 out of most IMEs. Irritating to have to go hunting around the Internet for the original character because modern day computer systems don't support it.

Censored by an input method? Crazy.

Just out of curiosity, does a similar double entendre exist with the Chinese word for "strawberry"? 草莓 cǎoméi

If so, I would want to make certain that I have my tones very accurate to avoid any confusion!

@Barrister,

I have a difficult time wrapping my head around your position on this. What's the big deal if we don't have instand IME access to one of the dirtiest words in the Chinese language? What's the urgent need to use it? 何必呢？(not to be confused with our illustrious 何毖老师)

@Xiao Hu - as i see it an IME is a tool for communication no different than a typewriter. I don't see any valid reason why anyone should put up technical roadblocks to prevent people from using certain words? This stuff is between the speaker and his audience.

In this case, all the omission seems to be doing is forcing people to appropriate other characters as homophones.

@Barrister

我的看法是, it's less shocking to see a homophone or pinyin as a stand in than the real thing in print. I just wish people would realize that there are other, much more clever and funny ways than 脏话 to get one's point accross. You tube, at times is unusable because of the sheer level of f-bombs in comments. I log in to watch a video and have to shake my head at what people have written. I don't even know where people's heads are these days, or if they use them. I'm telling you, peppering posts with bad language is absolutely unnecessary and shows one's own lack of 文化.

The point is, that in a puplic forum, it's not between you and your reader, it's between you and your readers, because in a forum, everyone who logs in becomes your audience. Some may not appreciate your choice of language. Maybe banning the c-bomb from IME's is a good thing, it will force people to think of better methods of self-expression.

@蓝大卫，

I don't think 草莓 has this kind of problem too :) Although there is a riddle : 有一片青草地，来了一群羊， 打一种水果。你能猜到是什么吗？

前不久有一个新闻：现在的一些孩子认为羊驼就是草泥马，一群学生去动物园，围着几只羊驼，大叫“草泥马”，老师告诉他们，这是羊驼，他们完全不相信，说老师一定是错了，这就叫“草泥马”！

其实我觉得那种动物挺可爱的。

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

It may just be a font issue -- I believe 肏 appears in extended GB but not the default character set. There's also the fact that most people are unaware of this character and its similarly uncouth brethren, as they've only ever seen the more commonly used homophones.

@Xiao Hu - I've decided that it's probably best to let people get all the c-bombs and b-bombs out of their system early on so that they can realize that cursing in Mandarin, or at least cursing in this way, is just not very much fun. There are much better, much more effective ways of verbally crushing your enemy than just lobbing a couple of these -- indeed, cursing in this manner is really just counterproductive, since if you don't know how to escalate you're basically stuck wheeling out the heavy guns first thing in the argument and then watching helplessly as your bluff gets called.

But 肏 and 屄 and 𣬠𣬶 (those last characters don't show up in my font: a 毛 and a 几 and a 毛 plus a 巴, respectively) all have their places -- including 红楼梦, where they all occur. (Often hilariously, as in the case of 𣬠𣬶, when the drunkard and lout Xue Pan is taking part in an after-dinner poetry game with his more cultured relatives and finds himself unable to think of any rhymes that aren't inane or pornographic.)

What does the "J" mean in CJTV?

@Echo,

真的吗？以后直接把羊驼叫草泥马算了。。。。。。。：（