河蟹

Mandarin · pinyin hé xiè

Meanings

  1. river crab
  2. Internet censorship (pun on "harmonious" 和諧 hé xié, which is blocked by the great firewall of China)
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Characters in this entry

河
hé · river; stream; the Yellow River
蟹
xiè · crab
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

2–4 · he2 xie4

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Read this spelling in Classical texts

Follow a written form into the eight pinned witnesses: Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, Sunzi and the Mao Shijing. A match is a place to investigate; it does not prove that a modern dictionary sense fits the passage.

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

ho4 haai5

Cantonese word readings for 河蟹. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

CanCLID contributors · CC BY 4.0 · source & license · Data pack

Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

noun

  1. river crab; freshwater crab (Classifier: 隻/只 m)

verb

  1. (Mainland China, neologism, pun, slang) alternative form of 和諧 /和谐 (héxié, “to censor; to enforce censorship”)

Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history

Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source & license · Data pack

河蟹 · he2 xie4
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 63,589
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record河蟹 河蟹 [he2 xie4] /river crab/Internet censorship (pun on "harmonious" 和諧|和谐[he2 xie2], which is blocked by the great firewall of China)/