A woman accidentally set light to £20,000 cash that was meant for her husband's staff after hiding it in a wood-burning stove and forgetting it was there.
Hao Bin, 35, stashed the wad of money inside the cooker to keep it safe for her husband Wang so he could pay builders.
The next morning Mrs Bin went to make a pot of tea, throwing a lighted match and kindling into the stove with burning paper so she could boil some water. See more photos after the cut...
Hao Bin stashed the money inside her stove, but forgot it was there and set fire to it while making tea
Mrs Bin, 35, was inconsolable after the blaze, but her husband Wang, 39, said he had forgiven her
She only realised her grave error when she went to add some more wood and saw the plastic bag filled with Chinese bank notes was almost entirely incinerated.
Mrs Bin, from Shaoshan in central China's Hunan province, threw water onto what was left of the cash, but it was too late.
The devastated woman took the charred remains to the Bank of China, but officials told her that, as less than half of each note was left, they could not exchange them for new money.
Mr Bin, 39, who owns a small construction company and needed to pay his workers a total of £20,000, said he had forgiven his wife.
He said: '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.
'It was a hard blow, and my wife is devastated. But I have forgiven her, and we will survive.'
Many Chinese people choose to hide money at home because of a lack of trust in banks, with some hiding them in pillowcases and socks to keep them safe from thieves.
