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Front Page of the Day
White House, Dark HorsePosted by Eric Mu on Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 1:17 PM
 Xiamen Economic Daily January 21, 2009 Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony that took place yesterday is all over today's Chinese newspaper front pages. Among them, Xiamen Economic Daily announced the news with the headline "White House, Dark Horse" (白宫黑马). The headline puns on new president's last name and race: the last syllable of the Chinese transliteration of Obama is which means horse, and the "black" obviously refers to his skin color. "黑马" ("literally black horse") means the same as the English expression "dark horse". It may be coincidence, but the "dark horse" headline is quite telling about the general response of the Chinese public to Obama's seemingly surprising ascendancy. Links and Sources
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Comments on White House, Dark Horse
The first aobama/heima slippage I have seen actually was buried in a Beijing News year-end wrap article sometime in mid-December, which in recounting the big events of 2008 first talked about the black horse president and then moved on to the Somali pirates with the connecting clause "同样是‘黑’ ，索马里海岛。。。“ I took it as off-color Beijing humor but it looks like this nickname might be taking root.
It's a shame that you didn't talk about The Beijing News, as you often do. If I am not mistaken, and I might be, they quite seriously misinterpreted Obama's speech. I would have been interested to hear your thoughts. I have tried to explain myself a bit better over on my blog.
The best was the headline that the Global Times put up right away on their website, that Obama said America was ready to "be the leader of the world again." Out of the whole speech they picked one line and twisted it to sound more arrogant, basically offering him up for a public verbal stoning, which the GT's idiot readers promptly obliged with. But to their credit, only a handful used racial slurs!