A Chinese woman was overjoyed to be reunited with her life savings after her husband accidentally sold the cash with a pile of rubbish for recycling.

Fan did not realise his wife, Liu Yuan, had hidden the money, worth £1,500, in a cardboard box and sold it to rubbish collectors for less than 1p. Liu, who runs a lottery shop in Jinan, Shandong province, was distraught as the money was intended to pay for her niece's hospital bills. She immediately called the police and sent out her husband and a shop worker to search for the money at every recycling centre in the city.

Later that morning, Liu received a call from her worker, Xiao Wang, to say he had found another carton from the lottery shop in a recycling centre. "I called her immediately, as we sold the rubbish together, so the money should also be in this recycling centre," he said. Soon, the couple, Xiao Wang, and recycling centre owner Pan Rongzhong were sifting their way through mountains of rubbish in search of the missing fortune.

And eventually they found the money, still wrapped in its plastic bag - just two hours after Liu had first noticed it had gone missing. "She burst into tears as soon as she saw the money. She was overjoyed," Pan told the Qilu Evening Post. Back at the shop, Liu couldn't help laughing all morning: "I really didn't expect to see my money again, it's so lucky," she said.

I wonder if my wife has a couple of grand stashed away somewhere...

Maybe I'll just go through that last load again...

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