A widow at 19 promised to guard her family's two great bronze cauldrons, hid them through seven Japanese raids, and gave them to the state

Pan Zuyin, a Qing official and collector, acquired two bronze cauldrons of the Western Zhou dynasty, the Da Yu ding and the Da Ke ding. The Da Ke ding was dug up at Famen in Shaanxi in 1890 and carries a 290-character inscription. Pan Zuyin died in 1890 without a son. His more than 600 bronzes were moved to the family home in Suzhou. Ding Suzhen married into the family at 18. Her husband, the family's heir, died three months later and asked her to protect the bronzes. She took the name Pan Dayu, after the Da Yu ding. When Japanese planes bombed Suzhou in 1937, she had carpenters build wooden boxes and buried the two cauldrons under the house with two servants. Japanese soldiers searched the house seven times and did not find them. The boxes rotted after about seven years, and she moved the bronzes into a small room behind old furniture and clothes. In July 1951 she wrote to give the two cauldrons to the state. She refused a cash reward and took a citation, which hung on her bedroom wall for 50 years. Both were shown when the Shanghai Museum opened in 1952. The Da Yu ding went to Beijing in 1959. Pan Dayu died in 2007. The Da Ke ding is in the Shanghai Museum.