Zhou Youguang is the scholar who invented Pinyin(拼音), a system ofromanisation for Chinese characters. Since 1958, Chinese primary schoolstudents have learnt Pinyin, before they learn characters. Thanks to him, onebillion Chinese have become literate – the greatest contribution by a linguist inhistory. After an extraordinary life, he died in January 2017 at the age of 111. He had several lives – a banker in Shanghai, New York and London;supplying food and textiles for the army and ordinary people during World WarTwo;: after 1949, a linguist. He lived through all the campaigns of the Maoistperiod, spending 28 months in a labour camp in west China. He wrote 49 books,many critical of the Soviet Union, the Soviet model used in China and of MaoZedong. In the last 20 years of his life, he was one of the few intellectuals inChina willing to speak the truth in public. He lived so long thanks to an innateoptimism, intellectual curiosity about everything and a Buddhist-like humility tosee himself and his belongings as of little value.