QINGDAO, SHANDONG - A child in China found 50,000 yuan (S$10,000) in a drawer and promptly tore them into tiny pieces while his parents were out.

It's not the first time such mishaps have happened to people who stashed cash at home.

Mr Gao, who is from Qingdao in Shandong province, said that his five-year-old son amused himself by tearing up the notes on Saturday (May 20), while he and his wife were away.

He said he could not blame the child as he was young and did not know what he had done was wrong.

For two days, Mr Gao tried to put the pieces back together but it was too difficult, local media reported.

"The pieces from different notes were all mixed together," he said. "Some were torn into three or four pieces, but others into more than 10 fragments, it was too hard."

The business man tried to exchange or deposit the torn notes at several banks, but was rejected.

Last year, a dog chewed up a secret cache of 3,800 yuan a Liaoning man had hidden in a quilt.

In 2014, a four-year-old child ripped up 3,585 yuan while the mother was cleaning the house in Xi'an in Shaanxi province. The mother said she thought he was ripping old books.

That same year, one retiree from Guangdong lost 80,000 yuan, which he stored in his shed, to termites. He managed to get 40,000 yuan back from the bank.