This ethnographic grasp of harmony as language policy in China, focuses on Internet's ‘harmony’-related language practices. Though the state is probably the biggest stakeholder, the real online harmonization processes evolve in multidirectional, iffy and detailed, rather than abstract, straight or monofocal ways. Internet memes critique and unsettle this policy. This comprises novel word meanings (e.g. ‘harmony’ as euphemism for censorship) and puns around the acoustic picture of hexie and other censorable words, ending in the creation and diffusion of myths and songs centering on ‘river crab’ (hexie) and ‘grass mud horse’ (caonima) as dissent placeholders, which feed back into offline popular (and critical) culture.