A woman said she found a $56,000 secret stash of valuables while cleaning her new apartment, but wants to return them to their rightful owner
Jiang Jingping, based in Ningbo, China, went viral after saying she wants to return the items to their rightful owner, according to local reports.
Craig Hastings/Getty Images
- A woman in China said she found a secret stash of valuables in a safe in her new apartment.
- Jiang Jingping found the windfall, worth £56,000, when cleaning out her new apartment, local reports said.
- She's gone viral for trying to return the loot to its rightful owner.
A woman tidying her new apartment in China said she discovered a box with $56,000 worth of valuables hidden behind a shelf, and is going viral for wanting to return it all.
Jiang Jingping, who is in her early 50s, said she was cleaning her newly rented apartment in Zhenhai, Ningbo, on July 20 when she found a green safe in the corner of a wall, Ningbo Evening News, a local media outlet, reported.
Inside were five certificates of deposits, gold rings, necklaces, and other jewelry worth more than 400,000 yuan, or $56,000, she told the outlet.
"I was immediately taken aback, and didn't know what to do," she said, per Ningbo Evening News.
Jiang, who works at a social agency for people with disabilities, said she alerted neighborhood officials, who tracked down the previous owners of the house, according to the outlet.
The property was previously owned by an elderly couple who had died, and the apartment was sold by the deceased's family, who didn't know about the stash, per Ningbo Evening News.
The previous owners' grandson, Zhou Jian, suffers from hemiplegia, or paralysis on one side of the body, and was elated to receive the money, officials told Chengdu-based Red Star News. The outlet posted footage of Jiang returning the items in person to Zhou.
Zhang Jingbo, secretary of the local Communist Party committee, praised Jiang for her actions, telling the outlet that local officials "give her a thumbs up."
The story has since gone viral on social media, with the hashtag associated with the story seen 100 million times and taking the first place for search rankings on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, in late July, per data seen by Insider.
In videos of the event, which circulated on Weibo, Jiang could be seen pointing to a compartment in a section of a lower wall, as a closer look revealed it was a small safe, with what appeared to be two shelves visible when the thick door was open. The videos also showed close-ups of the valuable items which appear to have been retrieved from the hiding place.
The video racked up thousands of comments as it was shared across the social media platform, and received a broadly positive response as viewers appeared surprised by the find, and praised Jiang for her honesty as she refused to keep the items for herself, according to South China Morning Post.
Videos where people appear to find hidden safes in old buildings have the potential to go mega viral on social media, as viewers get hooked on the mystery of what's inside.
The hashtag #HiddenSafe has over 136 million views on TikTok alone and features uploads from people sharing similar discoveries, although viewers are sometimes skeptical about the authenticity of the finds.
In February 2022, a TikToker received a staggering 93.2 million views on a single video when they posted a lengthy clip with an on-screen caption that said they'd discovered a safe built into the fireplace on the first day in their new house, and made an entire account dedicated to cracking it open and revealing the contents, which racked up 608,000 followers.