Stills from the contemporary insurance fraud film The Beneficiary (2019). (Infographic/Figure)
With the exposure of the wife-killing insurance fraud case in Thailand and the insurance fraud case in Shandong Shan County's "brain stroke" village in recent years, the topic of insurance fraud has once again attracted widespread attention. In the literary film and television works with crime themes, "cheating insurance" is an important content that is repeatedly expressed, from Hitchcock's classic film "Telephone Murder" (1954) to the film "Beneficiary" (2019) produced by Ning Hao and starring Dapeng and Liu Yan, including the Japanese writer Ye Zhenzhong's socialistic speculative fiction "Absolute Scream" (2020), which won the "Douban" 2020 reading list "Reasoning and Suspense Category Top 1", all of which revolve around the "cheating insurance" to develop their own storyline imagination.
Insurance fraud is linked to a clear criminal motive, that is, the coveting of the interests of high insurance premiums, and insurance is related to life and health. The fraudster may, like the actual shan county insurance fraud case, forge his own patient records and related bills; or further expose the evil side of human nature like the above-mentioned literary and film works, that is, use the cover of family affection to obtain insurance compensation by harming the health and even life of relatives. In the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, with the introduction of commercial insurance as a new thing in society, criminal acts such as insurance fraud occurred accordingly. Detective fiction writers, who are naturally sensitive to crime subjects, quickly capture the elements of evil and deceit. From these detective novels of the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China with the theme of fraud, we can get a first glimpse of the urban life, property concepts and criminal imaginations of the people at that time.
Generally speaking, modern insurance can be divided into four categories according to business protection objects: property insurance, life insurance, liability insurance and credit insurance, of which property insurance and life insurance are particularly closely related to modern personal life. Especially with the rise of modern cities, the population is concentrated, the pace of life is accelerating, and various risks and hidden dangers have increased accordingly. For example, in what Benjamin calls a modern city like a sin jungle, the sudden threat is as unpredictable as the red-haired gorilla who breaks into his private house in Poe's novel "Murder in Mogul". Correspondingly, although family property insurance and personal accident insurance cannot completely avoid tragedies, they can alleviate financial worries. Many insurance, in the Chinese detective novels of the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, are the most frequently told, the first fire insurance.
Fire has existed since ancient times, and traditionally because of avoidance, it is often called "walking water". Especially with the large population and dense settlement of the city, it is very easy to fire. During the Northern Song Dynasty, because of the brick and wood as the basic architectural structure, fires often occurred in Tokyo. Accordingly, the government set up urban fire fighting institutions such as "Wanghuolou" and "Submarine Fire Soldiers" in The city of Bieliang and special firefighters. In the "Tokyo Dream Record", it is written: "Looking at the fire tower in the brick building on the high ground, there are people upstairs who are hopeful." There are several official houses under it, more than 100 garrisons, and firefighting household affairs, such as large and small barrels, sprinklers, hemp, axe saws, ladders, fire forks, large ropes, iron anchors and the like. Whenever there is a fire left behind, there are horse soldiers who rush to report to the lord of the military box, the three ya in front of the horse infantry army hall, and the Kaifeng Province, and the leaders draw water to put out the fire, and do not work for the people. "It can be said that it is a detailed record of the firefighting work of the ancient Chinese government. Many later researchers have found through the "close reading" of Zhang Zeduan's "Map of the Upper River of the Qingming Dynasty" that there is no one in the "Wanghuo Building" and "Downstairs Official House" in the city of Bieliang, and they deduce from this that the imperial court governance was incompetent at that time - the fire fighting institutions in the capital were nothing and the dynasty was "declining".
On the one hand, urban fires require the timely rescue of the fire protection system, and on the other hand, they also need the rapid follow-up and proper payment of relevant insurance institutions. The fire insurance system was introduced to China at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and in Han Bangqing's novel "The Legend of the Flowers on the Sea", there is a description of the fire alarm and fire insurance in the concession after the fire on Dongqipan Street. It can be seen from this that the fire fighting means at that time were quite mature, not only had a timely fire alarm system "crashing the clock", but also adopted the method of connecting the leather pipe to tap water to spray fire extinguishing, and the "medicinal water dragon" mentioned in the novel refers to the fire-fighting special water mixed with fire extinguishing agent. It is precisely by relying on the "Smashing Bell" and "Potion Dragon" that the large-scale fire in the novel can be quickly calmed. The more interesting detail is that in the face of the fire on the East Chessboard Street next door and Wang Liansheng's panic, Chen Xiaoyun has been calmly comforting him, because "I am resistant to insurance, what am I afraid of?" (You bought insurance, what are you afraid of?) It can be seen that fire insurance became a reassuring pill for people in the city at that time.
It is a little surprising that the urban fire insurance system sometimes even affects people's firefighting behavior in turn. The scholar Wu Fuhui once analyzed the fire plot in Wu Zhaoren's condemnation of the novel "The Strange Situation Witnessed in Twenty Years". In the novel, the owner of the fire is not allowed to rescue his belongings from the fire. At that time, the statutes of the "Ministry of Works and Bureaus" in Shanghai clearly explained this: "Anyone who enters the fire field is not allowed to trespass no matter who has a fire-fighting sign." There are four kinds of fire-fighting cards issued by the director of the fire-fighting society, first, each person in the fire-fighting association has this card and is admitted to the inner circle of the fire-fighting field; second, the representative of the insurance line has a fire-fighting sign for each person in each line and the person allowed by the Ministry of Works and Bureau, and once the fire is extinguished, he enters the fire field to read everything..." Wu Zhaoren guessed from the words of several characters in the novel that the patrol did not let everyone move things from the fire site, most likely because of the interest relationship with the insurance company:
I said, "The fire is burning, and the patrol is not allowed to move things, which is not too much." Zi An said, "In his case, one is afraid of grabbing the fire, and the other is afraid of moving a large number of people, hindering the fire." Although it is reasonable to say, according to my opinion, I am afraid that insurance companies also have a lot of ideas. I said, "Why?" Zi An said, "If you are not allowed to move things, you will be forced to live with your family insurance!" ”
Professor Wu Fuhui analyzed: "The Shanghai fire field rule of 'no moving things' leads to the two-sided nature of a newborn modern city in establishing the standard of citizen behavior: on the one hand, it shows the authority of urban rules by maintaining firefighting order, on the other hand, it hides the all-pervasive mechanism of urban commerce, and the unfairness and deception brought about by it. (History of the Development of Modern Chinese Literature)
From the relevant historical archives, it is indeed possible to find evidence of the close cooperation between the fire insurance company and the Fire Administration Office of the Shanghai Concession and the economic and financial transactions, and even the Fire Insurance Company has given great financial support to the Fire Administration Office of the Shanghai Concession. For example, according to the financial report of the Ministry of Works, from April 1, 1866 to March 31, 1867, the actual total income of the Fire Administration Office was 2517.26 taels, of which the "number of pledges from fire insurance companies and Chinese" was 2317.26 taels. In addition to social welfare, the business logic of the fire insurance company is easy to think clearly: if the fire insurance department has more abundant funds and manpower and material resources, more advanced equipment and more efficient rescue work, then the probability of claims of the fire insurance company will be greatly reduced, which will better ensure the interests of the fire insurance company. As a result, in the Shanghai Concession at that time, a situation of common prosperity and cooperation between fire insurance companies and fire departments (fire administration departments) was formed.
Illustration of the fire extinguishing scene in the late Qing Dynasty, "Fighting the Fire" (Partial) (1910), written by Ming Fu, is included in the "Dianshizhai Pictorial Encyclopedia". (National Newspaper Index Database Data Chart/Figure)
With the establishment of the modern fire insurance system, there have been many new types of crimes or suspected criminal acts, and reports like this can often be seen in the Declaration at that time:
At one o'clock in the afternoon yesterday, the Tongruyuan South Goods Store on WestWard Road in the United States did not know why the fire started, but fortunately it was rescued and extinguished. ...... The incident was heard by the head catcher, and the decoration of this shop was not completed, and there were already a number of silver and silver in the fire, which was suspicious, because the bao detective Zhu Guisheng went to investigate. ("Suspicious Fire", Declaration, January 15, 1904)
The report suggests that it is likely that the homeowner set himself on fire to cheat the insurance. This kind of behavior also became the material for literary works of the same period, in Sun Jiazhen's "Dream of Continuing prosperity on the sea", Xiao Huaice and his neighbor Cai Lanhe deliberately set fire to defraud the compensation of fire insurance; and in the novel "Xiepu Chao" by the sea dreamer (Zhu Shouju), the protagonist Qian Ruhai guarded himself and stole a large amount of compensation from fuguo water and fire life insurance company. In these novels, fire insurance has become one of the parties' fearless dependence, and the fire will not only not cause the final economic loss, but will bring a considerable insurance compensation, which has become a basic "consensus" of people at that time.
In the detective novels of the same period, arson deception is directly used as the core ruse, the fundamental criminal motive and method of the whole novel. Lu Chan'an's detective novel "Midnight Bells" (published in Detective World, No. 5 to No. 6, 1923) is a typical example of this, the novel adopts the pattern of multiple cases nested among each other, at first the reader thinks it is just a theft case, and later develops into an attempted murder, and the final truth is that Chen Kanghou instigated Yang Dequan to design and frame Feng Yi'an's "arson plot" case. The murderer pretended to open a school and actively helped his old friend through the economic difficulties, and his intention was to find a way to create the last seemingly unexpected fire, and then defraud the fire insurance money.
As detective Li Fei in the novel said: "Now people who want to make reparations are more clever, often asking people to open a shop number with a slippery head next door, which is not safe, and secretly sets fires to burn the neighbors together." After the investigation, the family of the person who started the fire had no insurance, and there was no doubt that he was arson, and the people who were tired around naturally wanted to compensate. In the novel, Chen Kanghou suffered a terrible loss in business, so he thought of profiting by "arson to lose money". On the one hand, "the Greater China Correspondence School does not have fire insurance", on the other hand, he posted himself in the shop next door and "insured 20,000 taels of fire insurance in Anping Insurance Company", trying to create the illusion that the neighbor who did not buy fire insurance caught fire and suffered with him.
In the novel, the murderer's arson means are also "varied", he began to plan artificial arson, and later designed a set of fire devices that can automatically burn regularly: "Put the alarm clock in the box, put gunpowder around, and the needle on the clock is dialed at one o'clock; and the extremely violent gunpowder line is tied to the hammer that hits the clock; when the time comes, by the excitement of the bell, the medicinal properties will explode, and the natural fire in the box will be fired." This is likely to be the earliest "time bomb" installation in China's local fiction creation.
Stills from the Republic of China fraud film "Red Pink Skull" (1922). (Infographic/Figure)
Life insurance is also one of the important materials for the detective novels of the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. In Cheng Xiaoqing's "Blood Under the Wheel", after a case of a train rolling a dead person, detective Hawthorne is keenly aware that the deceased had purchased life insurance before his death. However, Hawthorne's attitude toward life insurance is different from Bao Lang's view that "life insurance is originally a new enterprise that is beneficial to the social economy; especially those who are paid for life insurance, and there are subsidies after their deaths, which will not affect widows, orphans and ordinary people in society", but more criticism of the life insurance company's general "use of various cumbersome and one-sided charter provisions, specifically to find gaps in debt", "ulterior motives", "'searching for bones in duck eggs'" moves. And according to Hawthorne's preliminary judgment, the case does not rule out the possibility of the deceased's family killing people and cheating on insurance, "the perpetrator may be his wife, because there is a group of young women from the so-called Ten Sisters Party in Shanghai, who specially use the means of confusion to lure the men into their traps, and then give the men life insurance, and then poison their hands and cheat them of insurance premiums."
For this kind of murder and deception technique, Sun Shushi once wrote a long novel "Ten Sisters" (Civilization Bookstore, 1918), in which prostitutes and female students married Jinlan to deceive men as a means of wealth and wealth, of which killing and cheating insurance is one of their evil ways. Since then, there has also been a movie with a similar theme, "Red Pink Skull" (1922), which has a great impact for a time. Cheng Xiaoqing's novel that "there is a group of young women of the so-called Ten Sisters Party in Shanghai" is likely to be influenced by this novel and the film.
In the history of later detective novels, there are many works about relatives (especially husband and wife) killing each other for life insurance. For example, in Ye Zhenzhongxian's novel "Absolute Scream" cited at the beginning of this article, the heroine Yoko Suzuki is a habitual criminal who specializes in "killing husbands and cheating on insurance". Another example is the American writer James F. Kennedy. In M. Kane's detective novel "The Postman Always Rings the Bell Twice" and its real-life case prototype, the wife also instigates the sympathizer to buy a large sum of life insurance before killing her husband. Even In the famous detective radio drama "The Club of Survivors", Ellery Quinn designed a "Donti-style" insurance system: a group of "funders" co-founded a pension fund, and the last members will receive all the benefits, this almost "perfect crime" (detective novel proper term, broadly defined as an unsolvable crime) motivation in the history of detective fiction is actually rooted in a kind of literary imagination of property insurance. From another point of view, in more fictional works and real life, the two professions of insurance investigator and detective have great similarities in themselves.
Fire insurance and life insurance in modern cities are not only an important part of modern people's fire safety and health safety protection, but also the product of modern people's property concept and financial awareness. The emerging criminal means surrounding modern insurance are essentially modern forms of individual desire and sin. In detective fiction, the modern commercial insurance system, which was originally used to protect safety and reduce risks, has increased new risk possibilities and even caused the ethical tragedy of mutual cannibalism between husband and wife, which reveals the hidden crisis of modern development while creating a happy life.
(The author is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chinese, Fudan University)
Southern Weekend Contributing Writer Zhan Yubing