A bank in China has been praised for repairing banknotes that were cut into more than 100,000 pieces by a woman suffering from depression.

The task of piecing together 32,000 yuan (US$4,500) worth of banknotes took four employees more than 20 days to complete.

A woman, surnamed Zhang, brought the cash into the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) in Kunming, Yunnan province, southwestern China, in June, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

She said that, five years before, the money had been cut up by her sister-in-law who had been struggling with mental health issues and who had recently died.

Zhang’s brother is now a widower with four children living in a mountainous village in Sichuan province in the southwest of the country.

The family is impoverished and desperately needed the money.

They took the fragments to some local banks, hoping it could be converted into intact banknotes.

Although China’s regulations stipulate banks should exchange incomplete or stained banknotes for free, the banks Zhang’s brother visited all turned down his request, saying it was too much trouble for them to piece the fragments together.

When Zhang visited her brother’s family in Sichuan, he asked if she could take the damaged money to Kunming to exchange it.

“My brother’s life is not easy, and if the money could be exchanged it would be a big help to them, so I decided to try my luck,” Zhang said.

What she did not expect was that an ICBC branch immediately agreed to help her by repairing the money.

The bank assigned four employees to piece together the damaged notes.

“It is the first time we have seen so many fragmented notes. There are more than 100,000 pieces with some even smaller than a fingernail.

“There are three types of currency with different patterns,” one of the workers said, adding: “We were quite confused at first.”

She said they used magnifiers to identify the broken pieces during the task, which took 22 days of intensive work.

Finally, they managed to splice together notes with a combined value of 32,000 yuan.

Zhang sent a tailor-made silk banner to the bank to thank the staff.

“Take people’s difficulties into consideration, solve problems and warm hearts,” the Chinese characters on the banner read.

The incident attracted a wave of compliments about the bank on mainland social media.

“Thumbs up for the bank. They are so compassionate towards ordinary people,” one person said on Douyin.

“How hard-working the bank staffers are. They might get depressed after dealing with so many damaged notes,” said another.

 - SCMP