Hell I realized myself the other day that there were two leaders between Deng and Xi who I couldn't name and know basically nothing about.

Oh well that's easy, before Xi Jinping there was Hu Jintao, who was a kind of moderate technocratic kind of guy. Always about plans and numbers. And before Jintao there was a magic toad wizard who wore George Romero glasses and would yell at journalists when they asked him stupid shit