15.3.2026
A woman mistakenly threw away her sister’s bag of gold bars and jewelry worth $217,000 and in order to recover it the family dug through heap of garbage all night to get it back.
The owner of the gold had visited her sister and her family of eight in the Jiangxi province of China, with the intention of selling the gold the day after. But her older sister who tiding up the house in the morning did not check what was in the bag, she hauled out into the garbage bin outdoor.
According to the Xiaoxiang Morning Post the owner of the bag of gold did not notice until around 11 a.m. She called police, who reviewed surveillance footage and confirmed a sanitation truck had already collected the garbage and driven it to a waste processing plant in neighboring Yiyang County.
That afternoon, the family rushed to the plant and intercepted three trucks that were about to enter for incineration. After the woman explained the situation, the fleet captain identified the third truck as the most likely one.
Yiyang County police helped negotiate with the plant’s management to release the vehicle, while the Hengfeng County sanitation department coordinated a separate site where the truck’s load could be dumped.
Over 10 tons of compressed waste was unloaded and spread across an open lot. The eight family members, wearing protective gear and headlamps, began their search around 7 to 8 p.m.
After working through the night and resting for just one to two hours before dawn, the family resumed searching. By the next morning, after sifting through roughly half the garbage, the woman recognized orange peels and other household waste from her own home. Sensing the gold was close, the family concentrated their efforts and soon found the bag fully intact.