Safe deposit boxes unopened since 1949 are still being guarded in the subterranean vault of the former Bank of China building on the Bund.
'We are still waiting for the owners to come back,' said staff guarding the huge American-built circular steel vault door.
The vault lies at the back of the building down a narrow winding staircase in which there are about 10,000 boxes.
They hold the mysterious contents of all that was left inside China's banks when Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army marched into Shanghai.
While in 1917, Russia's Communists made the most of propaganda by opening up and revealing what was stored in the country's banks, the Chinese Communists decided otherwise.
'There were 31 banks in old Shanghai which had safe deposit storerooms,' explained one of the guardians.