“... the Chinese have become very good at coming up with puns, alternative words, and memes. For example, they talk about the battle between the grass-mud horse and the river crab. The grass-mud horse, caonima, is the phonogram for "mother-fucker" - what the netizens call themselves. The river crab, hexie, is the phonogram for "harmonisation" or "censorship". So you have a battle between the caonima and the hexie. When big political stories happen, you find netizens discussing them using such weird phrases and words that you can't understand them even if you have a PhD in Chinese.”

“The mud. There are no good similes. Mud must be a Flemish word. Mud was invented here. Mudland must have been its name. The ground is the colour of steel. Over most of the plain there isn't a trace of topsoil; only sand and clay. The Belgians call them 'clyttes', these fields, and the further you go towards the sea, the worse the clyttes become. In them, the water is reached by the plough at an average depth of eighteen inches. When it rains (which is almost constantly from early September through to March, except when it snows) the water rises at you out of the ground. It rises from your footprints-and an army marching over a field can cause a flood. In 1916, it was said that you 'waded to the front'. Men and horses sank from sight. They drowned in mud. Their graves, it seemed, just dug themselves and pulled them down.”

“Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.”

“Chinese central government doesn't need to even lead public opinion: it just selectively stops censorship. In other words, just as censorship is a political tool, so is the absence of censorship.”

“When I was a kid," Orr replied, "I used to walk around all day with crab apples in my cheeks. One in each cheek."... A minute passed. "Why?" [Yossarian] found himself forced to ask finally.Orr tittered triumphantly. "Because they're better than horse chestnuts... When I couldn't get crab apples," Orr continued, "I used horse chestnuts. Horse chestnuts are about the same size as crab apples and actually have a better shape, although the shape doesn't matter a bit.""Why did you walk around with crab apples in your cheeks?" Yossarian asked again. "That's what I asked." "Because they've got a better shape than horse chestnuts," Orr answered. "I just told you that.""Why," swore Yossarian at him approvingly, "you evil-eyed, mechanically aptituded, disaffiliated son of a bitch, did you walk around with anything in your cheeks?""I didn't," Orr said, "walk around with anything in my cheeks. I walked around with crab applies in my cheeks. When I couldn't get crab apples I walked around with horse chestnuts. In my cheeks.”

“...He was irritable with Orr, who had found two crab apples somewhere and walked with them in his cheeks until Yossarian spied them there and made him take them out. Then Orr found two horse chestnuts somewhere and slipped those in until Yossarian detected them and snapped at him again to take the crab apples out of his mouth. Orr grinned and replied that they were not crab apples but horse chestnuts and that they were not in his mouth but in his hands, but Yossarian was not able to understand a single word he said because of the horse chestnuts in his mouth and made him take them out anyway.”