Thousands of crates containing treasures from the Forbidden City that disappeared at the end of the 1940s are lying untouched in a secret underground vault in Nanjing.
The boxes are part of the vast imperial collection of art treasures shipped to Nanjing by the Kuomintang in 1937 ahead of the entry of Japanese troops into Beijing.
'There are 26,000 pieces, mostly porcelain from the imperial household dating from the reign of Qing Emperor Shunzhi,' said Professor Xu Huping, curator of Nanjing Museum. 'They are still in the same wooden boxes packed with straw and wrapped in cotton.'
The collection, including treasures gathered from other Qing dynasty palaces in Shenyang and Chengde, was originally destined to form the core of a National Museum that the KMT began establishing in the 1930s. It opened in 1937, but before the Japanese sacked Nanjing the treasures were packed and dispersed to remote corners of Sichuan province.
After Japan's surrender, the collection was shipped back to Nanjing, but before it could be displayed the KMT was defeated in the civil war. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek escaped to Taiwan, and took as much of the collection as possible, to bolster his government's claim to be the rightful ruler of China.
It has long been rumoured that the KMT left behind thousands of boxes on Shanghai docks, which subsequently disappeared before the Red Army arrived.