Decomposed Chinese renminbi. South China Morning Post An elderly woman in eastern China who buried 100,000 yuan (around USD $15,600) beneath her kitchen four years ago recently dug it up to use for her son’s wedding only to find the notes had decomposed, news portal JSChina.com.cn reports.

The woman’s son said his mother sealed the money in a plastic bag and put it in a metal box before burying it.

Yet the banknotes were clumped and crumbled into pieces when they were handled.

“This is almost all of my parents’ life savings,” said the man, who lives in Muyang County.

“They can’t accept what’s happened. So I want to go to banks and see if they have any solution.”

However, an expert at the People’s Bank of China told him he had little chance to redeem the ruined banknotes.

But he offered to contact experts at other banks for a further evaluation.