20 Days, 10,000 Fragments: Wuhan Bank Staff Piece Together Damaged Banknotes For Elderly Man

A rural commercial bank branch in Wuhan has helped the family of an elderly man recover 266,600 yuan (US$37,150) after his pension savings were torn into more than 10,000 fragments, Elephant News reported.

The man, in his 80s and living with cognitive decline, is a resident of Xinzhou District. His nephew, surnamed Xu, found the shredded banknotes in a container at the man's home in mid-June and sought help from Wuhan Rural Commercial Bank's Xinzhou branch.

The bank formed a 13-member team to sort, match and restore the notes by hand. The work took more than 20 days, with staff using tweezers, magnifying tools and manual checks to identify fragments by serial number, pattern and anti-counterfeit features.

The exchange was completed on June 30. The recovered sum was about 60,000 yuan more than the family had initially expected, Jiupai News reported.

For safety and verification, the money was exchanged in three batches – 38,700 yuan, 100,000 yuan and a final 127,900 yuan. Staff spent more than two hours checking the last batch at the counter.

Ni Can, deputy head of the bank branch, said the team handled as much as 60,000 yuan in restored notes on its busiest day. Most of the banknotes were pieced together well enough to qualify for full exchange, while a small number of incomplete notes only met the threshold for half-value exchange under China's damaged-currency rules.

The fragments came from over 2,000 100-yuan notes, many torn into five or six pieces, with some pieces smaller than a fingernail, earlier reports said. On the first day, the 13-member team managed to fully restore only nine notes.

The family thanked the branch after the final exchange. The bank urged families to store elderly relatives' savings more safely.