As China celebrates the 70th anniversary of victory over Japan, tributes are being paid to an idealistic young foreigner who helped to save 20,000 people in the face of one of the worst atrocities committed during eight years of brutal occupation. Wang Xin and Cang Wei report from Nanjing.

Without a silver dollar and some rice donated by a young Danish national, Su Guobao and his family wouldn't have survived the winter of 1937.

Although the weather was bitterly cold, the climate was the least of people's worries. The Japanese captured Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, on Dec 13 and immediately embarked on a six-week massacre in which 300,000 soldiers and civilians were slaughtered and thousands of women were raped, according to Chinese historical documents.