Li Qingzhao lost her late husband's collection to war and thieves, then reported her second husband to the courts and went to jail for it

The poet Li Qingzhao and her husband Zhao Mingcheng built a collection of bronzes, books, paintings and inscriptions. When the Jurchen took the north, they fled south with 15 carts of books. The rest, filling more than ten rooms at Qingzhou, burned when the city fell. Zhao died in the eighth month of 1129. Before he left her he said the ancestral bronzes must be carried in her own arms and "survive or perish with you". In Kuaiji a thief dug through a wall and took five baskets of her calligraphy and paintings. By her own account in the afterword to their Records on Metal and Stone, only "one or two scattered remnants" were left. In 1132 she married Zhang Ruzhou. The marriage lasted about 100 days. She later wrote that he wanted her collection and mistreated her. She reported that he had lied about his examination record to get his post. He was struck from office and sent to Liuzhou. The Song code gave a wife who accused her husband two years of penal servitude even if the charge was true. She wrote that she spent nine days in prison. She completed the Records alone. Her poems and the afterword survive. The collection does not.