The natural death of 98-year-old Rao Pingru in Shanghai on April 4 created much chatter on Chinese social media, with thousands of people sharing the news on Wechat and Weibo.

Many netizens could also be found saying: "Pingru is reunited with Meitang in heaven, and they will never separate again."

The statement is in reference to the illustrated book that Rao, an army veteran and book editor, created to document his 60-year marriage with Mao Meitang, who died of diabetes and Alzheimer's in 2008.

Titled Our Story: Pingru and Meitang, the book was published by Guangxi Normal University Press in 2013 and has since won many awards at home and abroad. The book is also a best-seller, with almost 300,000 copies sold in China. It has also been published in seven foreign languages, including English, French, Italian and Spanish. The copyright of the English edition alone fetched a handsome $100,000, according to Liu Guanghan, vice-president of Guangxi Normal University Press.