Early in the morning we started our day with our usual toasts, sadly we couldn’t find the ones we bought after the cinema in our Lotte Mart. But still much better than donkey in the morning đ We didn’t take our usual bus (No. 983), instead we took the No. 420 bus to get directly to Lili’s home. The plan for today was to visit a finished project of the company and then to enjoy a foot massage afterwards. On the ride to the project Lili gave us some details about it. The name is „Grand Epoch City“ and is used mainly as an convention center during the summer. The Citic Group, which our company is part of, invested about 500 Million Euro into this project. In a total area of 2,85 kmÂČ there are three or four hotels, a 18 hole golf course, two Buddhist temple, restaurants and a lot of parks. All hotels together have a capacity of about 4000 people.
After a car ride of about 1œ hours we arrived at the City and were picked up by a electric cart to bring us to the first hotel. We were greeted by the manager who took us directly to the dining hall where we had lunch in a separate room. The food was again so much we took most of it with us. And we guess it must have been some really expensive food, there was fish, jellyfish, lamb, pork, beef, pigeon and salad. It was a feast again!
After lunch we visited one of the presidents suites and could get a brief glimpse of the live of the rich people:
To explore the other things in the area we took the electric cart and drove to the first Buddhist temple. On the way there we could get a good impression of the parks and restaurants they build there, most buildings looked nice, but some appealed to be of no use anymore, the paint was nearly peeled off and the windows looked dusty.
After we arrived at the temple we took a look at every of the three floors. Each contained at least three golden statues of different Buddhas and looked very impressive. But the problem with this temple was that it was build only 15 years ago, so the people didn’t like to worship here in the beginning. To make it a more holy place, the builders decided to get some parts of the skeleton of an old monk there, so that there is some history and people would come to worship.
Our next stop was the second temple, which was more like a big hall (the biggest one in North-China). We managed to take a photo, although it was forbidden:
After we collected our leftovers from the hotel we headed back to the car to drive back to Beijing. We had an appointment at 4:30 pm for a foot massage. First of all our feet needed to be softened, so we put them in some nice warm water. While waiting for the water to do the effect our neck and head was massaged. Then the foot massage began, it was a fifty-fifty mix of pain and relaxation.At some zones of the foot they were pressing really hard, but we were told that we would feel the effect of relaxation by tomorrow. While getting our feet massaged Lili asked whether we would also like a full body massage. Of course we agreed so after the one hour of foot massage we took another hour of full body massage. After these two hours we were the most relaxed persons on earth đ
Then Lili took us to her home, where we not only met her son and his wife again but also their dog „Coco“. After reheating the leftovers from our lunch she drove us home.
We wanted to share with our friends from school but nobody was hungry. So we might eat some of it in the evening.
Relaxed greets
Alex and Lukas