Family of Eight Searches Through Ten Tons of Refuse Overnight to Retrieve Gold Worth 1.5 Million Yuan Mistakenly Discarded

A woman from Shangrao, Jiangxi province, shared online that her sister accidentally threw away gold bars and jewelry valued at approximately 1.5 million yuan while cleaning. On March 12, the individual involved confirmed that, with assistance from family members, sanitation workers, and police, over 1,000 grams of gold were successfully recovered the day after they went missing.

According to the person involved, on the morning of March 8, her sister was cleaning and unintentionally disposed of the gold with the trash. It was not until 11 a.m. that she realized the gold was missing. She reported the incident to the police in Hengfeng County, who reviewed surveillance footage and confirmed that a sanitation truck had collected the garbage before noon and transported it to a waste processing facility in neighboring Yiyang County.

That afternoon, the woman and her family rushed to the waste facility and stopped three sanitation trucks scheduled to unload. The fleet supervisor determined that the missing items were likely in the third truck. Police from Yiyang County assisted by communicating with facility management to secure cooperation, while sanitation authorities in Hengfeng County arranged for a separate area where the truck could be unloaded for searching.

The woman stated that eight family members searched through more than ten tons of garbage from around 7 or 8 p.m. until the early hours of the following morning. The gold was successfully located the next morning. She mentioned that some of the recovered gold, valued at 1.5 million yuan, has already been sold, explaining, “It’s too nerve-wracking to keep so much at home.” She also plans to present commendatory banners to the departments that offered assistance.

On March 12, an official from the Hengfeng County Sanitation Department verified the incident, noting that they helped coordinate the return of the sanitation truck to the family’s neighborhood. The official emphasized that assisting residents in preventing significant losses is part of their duty.