The gravestones for Western missionaries on the campus of the Beijing Administration Institute. [Photo provided to China Daily]

"Participants of the Boxer Rebellion destroyed the gravestones once set up for the earlier generations of missionaries," says Li, referring to the violent anti-colonial and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901.

These included gravestones that used to sit on the campus of Li's institute. Some of them still do today, although removed from their original location. There were 49 of them.

"From then until modern times the tombstones were also subjected to the turmoil of China's 'cultural revolution' (1966-76), when, as symbols of imperialism, they were smashed up or buried," she says, pointing to the deep cracks that ran through some of the stone monuments. "Many were lost forever, but what could be found were later restored and moved together on this specially designed lot in the late 1970s and early 80s."

On the barely visited corner of the campus the monuments stand, bathed in a kind of solitude quite uncharacteristic of their owners' eventful lives.

"If you look closely, you will notice that in some cases the base of a monument does not match the part that rises from it," Li says.

One of them belongs to Ricci.

"When he made that map during his stay in China around 1602 he drew up all those longitudinal and latitudinal lines that would later transform the millennia-old Chinese way of cartography," Zhang says. "And then he put the land mass that was mainly occupied by China in the center-left, highlighted in yellow."

"He was out there to convert and converse."