(CNN) It's kind of hard to spell China without the letter "N" (at least in English), but the Chinese had to make do without the letter for a while because it was banned.

Yes, that's right: The Chinese government banned a letter.

China banned "N" as part of a widespread censorship clampdown that occurred after word got out Sunday that presidential term limits might be dropped, allowing Chinese President Xi Jinping possibly to stay in power indefinitely

The pushback to this development was intense online. So was the government's pushback to the pushback. In addition to banning use of the letter "N" online, words such as "immortality" and "ascend the throne" were also deemed inappropriate to use on the internet.

Victor Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, said the government likely feared that "N" was referring to the number of terms of office, as in a mathematical equation n > 2.

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