A few days ago I happened to see some pictures of alpacas on English.tw: 

http://english.tw/space-39623-do-album-picid-37345.html

They look cute and almost unreal.  When I saw those pictures with the Chinese name 草泥馬, I thought it was either alpaca (羊駝), llama ( 駱馬), or a totally different animal. In fact, I had not even known the English/Spanish word alpaca then.

We had some educational comic books at home when I was a kid. One of my favorite was a book about animals. It was one of a series of books translated from Japanese into Chinese. I remember seeing the names 羊駝 and 駱馬 (alpaca and llama) with a small drawn picture of them side by side. Later in life, I saw llamas at the Texas State Fair and probably on TV too, but I don’t remember seeing an alpaca.

A few days later, a net friend happened to mention she saw草泥馬 in Taipei Zoo.  Out of curiosity, I decided to do some research on this animal the next day. What I found was astonishing. Maybe most of people in Taiwan already knew about the origin of 草泥馬. There are even several versions of songs on this “beast” sung by “innocent” boys and girls on Youtube. I even found a video clip of Ai Weiwei  (艾未未) practicing one of the songs.  I don’t know if that Mr. Ai is real, but it’s quite convincing.

The moral of the story is: “Please say羊駝 for alpaca; don’t say 草泥馬 anymore.”