What started off as an apparently harmless column discussing the historical origin of a trendy phrase turned into a huge embarrassment for censors last week, when it drew public attention to the phrase's politically incorrect meaning and permitted a rare win for mainland netizens.
Two weeks ago, Jiefang Daily, a newspaper owned and run by the Shanghai Municipal Communist Party Committee, published a question-and-answer article, explaining the meaning of wocao - literally 'lying in a stable' - in the context of the financial downturn.
Wocao originally came from a checkmate move in Chinese chess involving the horse piece and has also been used in recent years as the antonym for the term tiaocao - jumping from one stable to another. Both terms refer to decisions by employees to switch jobs or stay put, depending on the market situation.
But wocao has taken on an added layer of meaning since the central government launched its latest internet cleanup campaign in which a handful of liberal blogs and discussion groups were among the thousands closed down for carrying 'vulgar' content.
Put in front of the term nima (mud horse), the phrase 'mud horse lying in a stable' resembles a crude phrase in Putonghua, as does caonima, or grass-mud horse. The use of the phrases in internet postings in recent months has come to be understood as a subtle symbol of rebellion against the content campaign.
Whether Jiefang Daily knew of wocao's freedom of speech connotations when it published the column is difficult to determine, but reality had certainly caught up with the paper by Thursday afternoon when the page was no longer accessible online, nearly a fortnight after the article was first published.