China is a huge country filled with all manners of sights and sounds that a tourist can experience and enjoy.
What streamer Deborah Sim, better known as Wolfsbanee, saw in Shanghai, however, was something she never expected.
While doing an IRL stream, she happened to capture a local couple just casually taking their alpaca and dog out on a walk on the streets.
The clip of her spotting the pet alpaca has gone viral on social media, with many netizens enjoying the cute sight.
Singaporean streamer Deborah Sim, or Wolfsbanee, flew to Shanghai recently to take part in ‘Jake’s Twitch Tours’, where streamer Jake’n’Bake led several fellow Twitch streamers on a tour of the Chinese city.
At the end of the day four stream in Shanghai, the streamers parted ways. Waiting for her ride alone late at night, Deborah was speaking into her camera to her Twitch channel’s viewers when she spotted something off-screen.
Interrupting her sentence with a shocked gasp, she switched the camera direction while excitedly whispering, “Guys! Guys!”
She then films the source of her surprise: a couple casually walking an alpaca on a leash. The woman leads the exotic animal while her presumed husband strolls along with a corgi.
“What the…?” She can only mutter in the viral clip of the moment. “Huh?”
Source: Wolfsbanee on Twitch
Alpacas are smaller cousins of the famous llama and are native to South America. They’re generally of a gentler disposition than llamas, which explains why the pet appears to obediently follow its owners.
The couple and their pets then stop at a crosswalk with the red man. The seemingly well-trained and well-mannered alpaca waits patiently with its owners and dog buddy.
Source: Wolfsbanee on Twitch
Ms Sim remained so bewildered that she could barely string a sentence together.
Eventually, she manages to say, “On the streets of Shanghai, guys, we see an alpaca just walking by casually.”
She also takes a moment to recognise the cute doggo, who sniffs at its pal-capa. Truly a bizarre, but loveable friendship.
Source: Wolfsbanee on Twitch
Soon, the green man appears, and the couple and their pets are off and soon out of sight.
Source: wolfsbanee on Twitch
It seemed to be Ms Sim’s first time seeing an alpaca.
“It’s illegal to even have something like that in Singapore,” she informs her chat, adding, “We’re not supposed to have exotic pets. That was crazy.”
Ms Sim’s chat proved to be as confused by the appearance of a South American mammal as a pet walking around Shanghai’s streets.
Comments of “HUH?”, “WTF alpaca?” and “That’s a weird-looking dog” flooded the chat.
Source: Wolfsbanee on Twitch
The clip was later uploaded on social media, where it has been viewed over 1.2 million times on Twitter.
After the clip of her spotting the alpaca went viral, Ms Sim tweeted she might have become the alpaca and ‘cao-ni-ma’ girl now.
In her initial surprise at seeing the exotic animal, Deborah said “It’s a cao-ni-ma!”, literally ‘Grass Mud Horse’ (草泥马). The term is a Chinese Internet meme referencing an alpaca, a pun sounding similar to a popular Chinese expletive.
Due to the vulgar nature of the joke, the Chinese government censors cracked down on its use.
Over time, the Grass Mud Horse has become something akin to a mascot for Chinese netizens fighting against government censorship, according to the China Digital Times.
During the Shanghai Covid-19 protests of 2022, alpacas, the Grass Mud Horse, became a symbol of protest against the government lockdowns, as reported by The Guardian.
Source: @whyyoutouzhele on X
Alongside the already popular exotic pet trade there, this could explain the presence of alpacas on the street without locals so much as batting an eye.
Chinese pet trends can be both wild and wacky — for example, one such trend saw owners groom mango pits into fluffy pets.
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Featured image adapted from Wolfsbanee on Twitch.
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