For Ma Chengyuan, as for other intellectuals, the blackest years of the communist era were the Cultural Revolution. Chairman Mao Zedong ordered the Red Guards to destroy the 'four olds', including art from the pre-revolutionary era.
As they rampaged through the homes of terrified collectors, Ma slept in his office to field telephone calls and sent museum staff to protect and catalogue artefacts. They locked the exhibits in storerooms.
Ma ordered his staff to disguise themselves as Red Guards and paint revolutionary slogans over the display cases. 'When the Red Guards arrived, we told them that we were busy making revolution ourselves.'
Local families entrusted their heirlooms for safekeeping to the museum, which had many crates of sealed boxes in its warehouses.
But, as fighting intensified between different factions, Ma was arrested by his staff and imprisoned in a store room for nine months. He was tortured by being repeatedly dropped on the marble floor, in an attempt to make him admit that he'd sold museum property for personal gain. His arm was broken; several of his colleagues who were also arrested died during the interrogations.
Finally, he was sent to a 'cadre school' for 're-education'. He was allowed back to Shanghai in 1972 to organise an exhibition to tour the US, after the visit of then US president Richard Nixon to China.