Last but not least: Necessity is the mother of creativity

A Chinese artist has immortalized the most beautiful linguistic creations in pictures. For example, you can see Marilyn Monroe's body with Mao's head on it - Maorilyn Maoroe - sitting on an alpaca. On the Chinese web, these animals are known as "grass mud horses", which are a symbol of creative resistance to internet censorship. The background to the grass-mud horse is as follows: one of the swear words that are filtered out in China is pronounced Cao Ni Ma. This sequence of sounds can be written in very different ways, one variant translates as "grass-mud horse" - the other variant is a clear invitation to jump into bed with your own mother.

On the head of the Maoroe alpaca sits the "valley dove", pronounced Gu Ge, which sounds similar to the pronunciation of Google. A few Maoroe fans walk in front of the grass-mud horse, one of them holding up a flag with the characters of the crayfish - another Chinese weaving mythical creature: The characters are pronounced similarly to those for harmony, which is an allusion to the filtering of web content; after all, those in power want a "harmonious society"...

Incidentally, the artist's website was - how could it be otherwise - blocked in the People's Republic of China; the authorities discovered his revolutionary intentions much quicker than he himself expected. But he won't be beaten so easily - he is now trying to distribute his works in China via back channels. We wish him every success.

> View pictures of the artist on Spiegel.de