A Chinese billionaire has made a serious claim for the title of best boss ever, after taking half of his employees – over 6,400 people – on an all-expenses-paid nine-day holiday to France, to celebrate his company’s 20th anniversary. The epic trip is expected to cost a whopping 33 million euros, of which 13 million will be spent in Paris, and 20 million in Nice.

Li Jinyuan, the chairman of Tiens Group Company, booked rooms in 140 three, four, and five-star hotels in Paris for 6,400 employees, and made reservations at some of the most popular attractions, including The Louvre museum. The huge group, consisting of Chinese, Russian, and Kenyan employees, has also traveled to the breathtaking French Riviera, where Li Jinyuan booked a whopping 4,760 rooms in 79 hotels in Cannes and Monaco.

Read More »

Inspired by the growing trend of photographing your food and sharing the photos online before tucking in, a Tel Aviv restaurant has launched a special program that allows patrons to take the best food photos possible. Called “Foodography”, the unique concept relies on color-coordinated dishes, perfect lighting and custom-designed plates that either spin around to offer different photo angles, or come with a smartphone holder, to make the photos worth sharing on sites like Instagram or Pinterest.

“We wanted to reconnect with a new generation of customers – youngsters who connect with food through the lens of a smartphone,” said a spokesman for Carmel Winery, the company that developed the concept along with Baumann Ber Rivnay advertising agency.

Read More »

A pensioner in China recently posted a very bizarre newspaper ad – he is looking for a family willing to adopt him in exchange for his monthly pension.

75-year-old Huan Qi, from Changzhou in Jiangsu province, told People’s Daily Online that he has been by himself ever since his wife passed away in 1999. His surviving relatives rarely visit him, and he is tired of waking up to an empty house, feeling lonely and miserable.

Huan’s only son lives in a work dormitory in Changzhou, so is unable to take his father in. One of his older brothers lived in Changzhou, but he died years ago, and all his other siblings live in Shandong. His granddaughter is married, with a child, so she is to busy to visit him regularly.

Read More »

If you think about it, logos are works of art too – they’re clever, well designed and come in a variety of colors. But are they appealing enough to tattoo on to your body? Well, for 23-year-old Indian tattoo artist Jason George, they are. The self-confessed ‘human billboard’, sports hundreds of tattooed logos of international companies that have impacted his life in some way.

“I know it seems insane but these tattoos are my way of giving thanks to the brands that have made an impact on my life,” said Jason, a college-dropout and founder of 21 Tattoo Studio in Mumbai. The logos inked all over his body include those of his favorite TV channel, mobile phone networks, fast food chains, and social networking sites. “All the logos that you will find on my body have a special place in my heart. They are related to my life in some way and I have memories and stories attached to these brands.”

Read More »

Children have the power to give people a new lease of life, but for this Chinese man, a child-sized doll managed to do the trick!

Song Bo was diagnosed with a serious illness two years ago that gave him constant headaches and made him depressed. The condition was so bad that he was convinced he would never marry or have children. Little did he know that his life was about the change very soon.

While he was browsing the internet one day, Song came across a listing on e-commerce website Taobao for a child-sized love doll. He bought the 4’10” doll and fell in love with it the moment it arrived. It may have been just a realistic-looking doll to anyone else, but for Song Bo it was a new beginning. He started treating the doll like his daughter, taking it along wherever he went, and even gave it a name – Xiao Die (“little butterfly”)

Read More »

If you believe millionaire art collector Forrest Fenn, there’s actually a real treasure buried somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, just waiting to be found. The 84-year-old author claims he hid a chest full of gold and jewelry – worth millions of dollars – in the mountains five years ago, and even left clues in his book The Thrill of the Chase. Tens of thousands of people have joined the hunt, but no one has managed to find the coveted treasure so far.

Fenn, a native of New Mexico, moved back to Santa Fe with his wife in 1970. He has always had a strong sense of adventure, but he didn’t get the idea to hide his treasure until 1988, when he was diagnosed with kidney cancer. He was told that his chances of survival were slim, so he started thinking of creative ways to share his wealth. That’s when he thought of a treasure hunt.

Read More »

A Chinese man is gaining notoriety for trying to cure his patients’ illnesses by literally beating it out of them. Former investment banker and self-styled healer Hongchi Xiao apparently believes that by slapping themselves black and blue, they are getting rid of toxins. But his methods have come under scrutiny ever since the death of a seven-year-old boy who attended his slapping workshop in Sydney.

Hongchi, who claims to have learned the ancient practice of ‘paida lajin’ from a Taoist monk, says that his slaps have cured several medical conditions ranging from diabetes to hypertension. “The slapping and stretching work together to clear the meridians of blocks and help the body get rid of the disease,” he explained. Slapping the body, he said, “builds heat, causing blood vessels to expand, and ‘chi’ to flow strongly. Yang rises, yin melts and long-held toxins and blocks are released.” Read More »

Brazilian body builder Romario Dos Santos Alves was so desperate to emulate the Incredible Hulk that he actually injected his arms with a potentially lethal combination of oil and alcohol. The 25-year-old risked his life in the process, and almost had both arms amputated. His grotesquely swollen muscles have earned him cruel nicknames like ‘beast’ and ‘monster’.

Romario, a former bodyguard and father-of-one, said that he became obsessed with the drug when he first moved away from his hometown to Goiania city. “I saw some really big guys in the gym with huge arms and I started to make friends with them,” he told reporters. “They introduced me to synthol and I got excited about the results – I lost control.”

“If you take it once, there will definitely be a second time – it’s addictive,” he added. And that’s exactly what happened to Romario. Impressed with the initial results, he soon began using the substance frequently. He even tricked his wife Marisangela Marinho into injecting the drug in places that he couldn’t reach. “I told her there was no problem with it – that it left the body after a short time.” Read More »

When this young Canadian couple got the chance to make a few extra dollars by renting out their three-bedroom home on Airbnb, they took it immediately. Little did they know that two days later, they would find their beautiful home wrecked beyond imagination.

Mark and Star King bought their house in 2010, in Calgary’s fashionable Sage Hill, for a little over US $300,000 and lived in it with their two sons – five-year-old Vincent and one-year-old Oliver. When a local man offered them about $650 to have the house for a weekend, the Kings, being mortgage-payers, couldn’t refuse. The man told the Kings that he needed the house to accommodate four of his relatives who were in town for a wedding. He was well-dressed, well-mannered, and told them, “You have a beautiful home. God bless you.”

“We use Airbnb when we travel, we love it, it’s a great website, vacation rental by owner type website and my parents are out of town so we were going to go and stay at their house and we get an offer to rent out our house for three days for a family coming for a wedding, it’s going to be four older adults, go through the house rules, they shook my hand,” Mark said.

Read More »

A California therapist is helping couples resolve their relationship issues in the most unusual way – by having them assemble IKEA furniture. The experience, she believes, is so frustrating that it might actually bring couples closer to each other!

“The store literally becomes a map of a relationship nightmare,” licensed psychologist Ramani Durvasula explained. “Walking through the kitchens brings up touchy subjects, like who does most of the cooking. Then you get to the children’s section, which opens up another set of issues. And that’s before you’ve even tried to assemble anything.”

“I would laugh with my ex-husband about it,” she added. “I saw what a pressure cooker it was. In the end, we hired someone to put the furniture together.”

Read More »

In a sheer stroke of advertising genius, Salta Beer has given three rugby players who lost teeth in action ‘Beer Tooth Implants’ – metal implants that double as bottle openers! And yeah, they actually work.

“We decided to give rugby players back the teeth they had lost in battle,” Salta Beer explained. “But we weren’t going to give them a simple tooth back, we developed a unique dental implant; a specially designed tooth to open beer.” Three rugby players were selected for the unique procedure and were featured in a commercial created in collaboration with Ogilvy Argentina.

Read More »

Thoroughly exasperated by her son’s misbehavior, a mother from Columbus, Georgia, came up with an innovative method to teach him a lesson. She teamed up with the local police force to stage an arrest of her fifth-grade son, hoping to scare him into behaving well at school.

33-year-old Chiquita Hill said that her son Sean’s teacher complained about him being “rude and disrespectful, not listening, talking back, and not doing his school work,” for the umpteenth time. She was running out of options and desperately looking for a solution, because she was scared that Sean’s behavior could escalate into serious disrespect for authority as an adult. That’s when she got the idea for a fake arrest.

Read More »

Meet James Wannerton, an Englishman with an incredibly rare ability to taste sound. That might seem absurd, but it is very much a reality for people with a condition called synaesthesia, which causes senses that are usually separate to intermingle.

Even as a young boy, James always experienced an involuntary taste on his tongue every time he heard a sound. Hearing the name Anne Boleyn in History class, for example, gave him a strong flavor of pear drops. He associated most of the British monarchs with a specific taste, making it easy for him to remember facts and events. His word-taste associations always helped him do better in school.

As he grew older, James found that his unique ability helped him in other aspects of life too. His relationships were all too delicious – he chose his companions not because of their looks or personality, but based on how their names felt on his taste buds. His schoolmates often had a strong essence of sliced potatoes and strawberry jam, while his dates’ names tasted like slices of rhubarb and melted wine gums.

Read More »

A Chinese man made the news last week for building an incredible model of his hometown, using nothing but coins! He spent an entire month painstakingly stacking up ancient and modern coins from 11 different countries to create the model, complete with roads, bridges and skyscrapers. Believe it or not, he didn’t use any glue!

He Peiqi revealed that he used his contacts in the coin trading industry to collect tens of thousands of coins for his masterpiece. Once the coins were ready, he got to work on the floor of his apartment, kneeling for two long hours each day. He carefully stacked the coins to resemble the general layout of Chongqing City.

Read More »

In movies, the mere sight of Godzilla has people running for the hills, but a new Godzilla-themed hotel in Shinjuku, Japan, is hoping the iconic monster will actually draw in new business.

Set at the very top of the Toho Cinema, in Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward, Hotel Gracery not only features Godzilla-themed rooms but also a 12-meter-high model of the monster’s head on its roof that can be admired from one of the six Godzilla View rooms. Interior decorations include a man-sized statue of Godzilla, a menacing claw hanging on the wall above the beds, classic movie posters and even custom Godzilla-themed toilets.

Read More »