During the Cultural Revolution, the properties of Shanghai's former capitalists were confiscated and they were persecuted and humiliated

During the Cultural Revolution, the houses of families of former capitalists in Shanghai were confiscated by their work units or rebel factions, and many people were driven out of their own homes, left with only one room or even no housing at all; some were stripped of their clothes and forced to hand over their property, and many people, to save their lives, laid gold bars and silver dollars out in their homes to let the Red Guards take them away in raids. There were even cases of apprentices seizing their masters' houses and relatives turning against each other.