Beijing: Every year China's most powerful leaders were drawn to the family home of a diminutive grandmother.

On the news of this 95-year-old's death last Saturday, Chinese President Xi Jinping's mother was the first to send flowers.

Hu Yaobang, left, and Li Zhao married in 1941. Credit:People’s Government of Hunan Province

Li Zhao is best known in China as the wife of the 1980s liberal reformer Hu Yaobang, who held the country's highest office as general secretary of the Communist Party - until being forced out. It was his death in 1989 that famously sparked the Tiananmen Square student protests.

The annual pilgrimages in more recent times of former Chinese leaders Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, and before his elevation to the top job, Xi, to her door, were read like tea leaves as a barometer of Hu's legacy of liberal ideas. They also spoke of personal loyalty.