China recently had a military parade commemorating the end of the Second World War, which became the most popular topic on social media. Publication made to Weibo (China’s analogue for Twitter) and WeChat (a popular instant messaging app) ranged from patriotic to grumbling and silly.

As it became clear from the worldwide web, while state television images of nuclear-capable missiles were intended to provoke shock, gifs of troops exercising before the parade had Internet users swooning at their cuteness. Some of the images that went viral were predictable. First of all, Xi Jinping’s wife, a famous folk singer, once again became a focal point for Chinese Internet users. A copy of her parade outfit was available on e-commerce site immediately after the broadcast of her performance on TV.

Second, a picture of a woman fanning President Xi and shielding him from the heat with an umbrella also spread widely on Chinese social media. However, before it could go completely viral, censors deleted it from the networks. Perhaps, this move was caused by comments under the post: the matter is that the umbrella has become a symbol of defiance since the Occupy protests in Hong Kong, when demonstrators used umbrellas to shield themselves from the police.

Finally, pictures of Chairman Mao’s grandson Mao Xinyu were also removed from the web despite the fact that news articles about him remained available. Mao Xinyu has long been an object of ridicule online for becoming the youngest major general in the People’s Liberation Army 5 years ago only because of his auspicious lineage.

Free Weibo, a website capturing deleted social media posts, revealed that messages that contained the words “parade”, “Jiang Zemin” and “Xi Jinping” were censored mostly.