Yax lizard

亚克蜥 (yǎkèxī): yax lizard

The CCP’s policies are yaxshi. (Source: Nie Bozi 聂波子)

Originally 亚克西 yǎkèxī, transliterated from yaxshi (ياخشى‎), meaning “good” in Uyghur. The word 亚克西 rose to fame in the CCTV 2010 Spring Festival Gala segment “The Party’s Policies are Yaxshi,” in which dancers in traditional Uyghur dress praising the Communist Party, a great irony in light of the inter-ethnic riots in Xinjiang the summer before. Netizens then created the word 亚克蜥 to mock the absurdity of the state propaganda.

The yax lizard was dubbed by netizens as “the first mythical creature of 2010,” joining the grass-mud horse and the river crab in the pantheon of mythical creatures.

Note: The Uyghurs are a majority-Muslim Turkic people and the titular nationality of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China’s far west.

Examples:

Ast丶ro ( @Ast丶ro )：Since yesterday (28th) afternoon, the famous photo-sharing software, and I should say the international social media for photography, Instragram, is blocked from visiting. Congratulations to having a new member in the social media family along with Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Line and Snapchat! It's really Yakexi to live in the Celestial Empire, and how I wish I could live in the "CCTV News Simulcast!" (September 29, 2014)

从昨天(28日)下午开始，著名照片分享软件，也算是国际摄影社交圈的Instgram无法访问。祝贺Facebook、Twitter、Youtube、Line和Snapchat的社交大家庭中又添新丁！住在天朝真是亚克西啊，真想生活在《新闻联播》里！[Chinese]