[1] In February 1860, aged only sixteen, Gabriel Devéria was recruited as a student-interpreter in Chinese for a new School of Interpreters that the French government wanted to set up in China.

[1] Devéria studied his trade at the French Consulate in Tianjin for several years, and between 1863 and 1869 he acted as an interpreter for the negotiation of treaties between China and Spain and Italy.

[1] Following the Tianjin Massacre in 1870, a Chinese mission of apology set sail to France, under Imperial Commissioner Chonghou, and Devéria was appointed to accompany the embassy as an interpreter.

Under the pseudonym T. Choutzé (朱茨), he published his first book in 1876, an account of his travels in the north of China (Pékin et le nord de la Chine).

He made rubbings of the polyglot inscriptions at the Cloud Platform at Juyong Pass, which he provided to Prince Roland Napoléon Bonaparte who published them in his Documents de l'époque Mongole des XIII et XIV siècles (1895).

[1] Devéria's final works were two pioneering studies of the Tangut script, mainly based on the bilingual Chinese-Tangut inscription on a stele at the Huguo Temple (護國寺) in Wuwei, Gansu.