Chinese Jigsaw Made of Thousands of Rotting Bank Notes
President Andrew Jackson never trusted banks and kept his “assets” hidden at home. Despite historical problems of fluctuating interest rates and tales of occasional bank fraud and robbery, sometimes there is no place like a bank when it comes to providing a safe place for money.
Just ask poor Ban Jing, whose father back in the 1980s, stashed some £20,000 (about $40,000) in the garden of the family home in Jiekeng, eastern China.
Now he is faced with the arduous task of piecing together thousands of rotting bank notes that were thought to be safe from greedy hands.
But Ban’s father never considered the thought that Mother Nature (or more specifically a mouse seeking nest material) might wreak havoc on unprotected paper money buried in the ground.
He also never told anyone about his treasure trove until he was on his deathbed at which time he revealed the whereabouts of the money to his son.
“I ran out there and dug it up, but it had been shredded by a mouse for a nest. It was damp and moldy – a real mess,” lamented 52-year old Ban.
Ban has been able to compensate for some of his losses but at the cost of an enormous amount of time and effort.
A local bank has agreed to exchange the bank notes for “new money” on the condition that Ban opens an account with them and can somehow stick all of the remaining pieces of money together!
The bank is trying to help their new potential customer with this unbelievably difficult assignment.
“So far we’ve invested seven hours and recovered around 2,000 notes but there is much more work to do,” said a bank spokesman.
Sometimes buried treasure does not turn out to be an “equal opportunity employer.”
Poor Ban.
What do YOU think about this?
(Link)
By MDeeDubroff on 08-09-2010
