Seven Chinese girlfriends buy mansion to retire and die together

Seven Chinese women are taking the “Golden Girls” approach to aging after purchasing a house together for their retirement.

“[At first] it was just a joke,” the girlfriends say in a video posted on YouTube from media startup Yitiao featuring their brand-new 7,535-square-foot house in the suburbs of Guangzhou, a major city in southeastern China near Hong Kong. “We [said that we] would get together when we were 60 and live the retired life together.”

That was back in 2008. A decade on, NextShark reports, they’ve made their friendship fantasy a reality, pooling some $584,000 to buy and completely remodel a dilapidated redbrick house an hour outside the Chinese village into a light-filled, glass-coated showstopper.

“We’ve known each other for over 20 years,” says the video’s narrator, who notes that their ages span about 10 years. “We were colleagues, and sometimes we are even closer than siblings.”

The three-and-a-half-story estate is surrounded by paddy fields. It features shared space on the ground floor and individual bedrooms for each of the ladies on the upper level.

Highlights include huge tatami mats for group hangs, a tea room, furniture collected in India and Morocco, and, of course, a long dining table for group meals. Outside there is a swimming pool and even an airy tea pavilion connected via a bamboo walkway.

“We’ll probably cook together, barbecue in the fields, sing and collect food in the village,” the friends say in the video. “We joke that each of us should practice one skill so that we won’t be lonely and fight with each other 10 years later … Some can cook beautiful food, some know traditional Chinese medicine, some play instruments and some grow vegetables.”

The women add their new communal home will keep their chosen family together forever.

“Ten or 15 years later our children might have grown up,” the friends add, “so we also hope that we can still be together in the next years.”