In the past month, the deaths of two Europeans who did much to explain China to the outside world have been marked in different ways on the mainland.
One was Gladys Yang, the English wife of Yang Xianyi, who survived some terrible years under Mao Zedong but managed to translate an astonishing amount of Chinese literature into English.
The other was Alain Peyrefitte, the former French minister under Charles De Gaulle, who played a role in France's diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic and who went on to write several books about China.
Since Yang passed away aged 80 on November 18, only one mainland newspaper has published a proper obituary: the China Daily ran a eulogy from the Chinese Literature Press where she worked for 40 years which called her a 'true friend of China', 'a great translator' and a great loss to Chinese literary circles.
She was born to British missionaries who worked in Beijing and spent her holidays in Beidaihe summer resort. In 1940, she graduated from St Anne's College, Oxford University, the first student to obtain a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese literature.
There she met her husband who was reading classics. The couple returned to war-torn China, teaching first in Chongqing, then Nanjing before being invited by Zhou Enlai to work at the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing.
Over the years they translated Ming and Qing Dynasty classics including The Dream Of The Red Chamber as well as China's greatest 20th-century authors such as Lu Xun, Lao She, Mao Dun, Sheng Congwen and many dreary tomes of socialist realism.