LeBlanc, Perry, Aniston, Cox, Kudrow, (Terence Patrick / HBO Max via AP)

  • Friends, after almost twenty years the cast reunites: here is the trailer

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May 28, 2021 Something was missing in the Chinese version of the highly anticipated

special episode of Friends

which aired last night all over the world and seen by millions of fans of the series.

From the reunion of about an hour and a half, the cameos of Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and the K-Pop super star band Bts were cut, all 'guilty' of having somehow offended Beijing in the past.

Chinese fans have noticed the censorship that his social network have expressed their anger. 



"Help! Will we never change? This makes me want to see the deleted scenes even more," commented one user on the Weibo microblogging platform. Other fans have acquired and shared the deleted clips or full episode link. Friends has a huge following in China with many guys who credit the show for introducing them to the English language and American culture.   



Among the darkened scenes, according to what we read on various news sites, there is also a shot of

Matt LeBlanc

in his underwear. Many fans said they were "baffled" to find that all three of the country's main streaming platforms, iQiyi, Alibaba's Youku and Tencent Video, had cut 6 minutes.



The 'faults' of the censored characters date back several years ago. A

Lady Gaga

had prevented a tour in China to have met the Dalai Lama in 2016. Even

Justin Bieber

can not perform in the country since 2014 has visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, seen by China and South Korea South, a symbol of Japan's imperialism. As for the

BTS

, they ended up in the crosshairs of the Chinese authorities last year after one of the members, also the protagonist of the clip aired during the Friends special, spoke of the "story of suffering" shared by South Korea and the USA in conflict of 1950-53, in which the two countries fought together against China-backed North Korea.