A man saw his workers' wages go up in smoke when his wife put £20,000 in a wood-burning stove before accidentally setting it alight after forgetting it was there.
Hao Bin, 35, kept the £20,000 wad out of sight ready to pay the workers when they were finished grafting on a major construction project.
But the next morning, she shoved a lit match into the stove with some burning paper while cooking water to make tea.
It was only when she went to add wood that she saw the plastic bag containing the money almost completely burned that she tried to extinguish the blaze
But the move came too late to salvage the money, which was destroyed.
Hao's husband, Wang, 39, said: "It was a hard blow, and my wife is devastated. But I have forgiven her, and we will survive.
"We had not been paid ourselves yet for our work, but I needed to pay the workers so we borrowed the money from friends and family, and we wanted somewhere to keep it safe for a day before paying it out."
Devastated Hao, whose husband runs a small construction company in the city of Shaoshan, in central China's Hunan province, took the notes to the bank.
But she was told by Bank of China officials that when less than half of the banknote remains, they cannot exchange it for a new one.
In China, trust in banks is still not widely accepted in the country, with many people preferring to hide the money around their home.
Sources: The Mirror
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