英语阅读学习笔记之中国式爱情保险.pdfVIP

October 15, ENGLISH LEARNING 2012 When insurance is a girl’s best friend 中国式爱情保险 One of the advantages of not having an insurance industry with hundreds of years of continuous history is that you get to make things up as you go along. So for last Thursday’s “Qixi”, or Chinese Valentine’s day, mainland insurance companies offered “love insurance” – for the spouse who has everything. The policies bear different names and different terms – they may be life policies, accident policies, medical or endowment insurance – but all are marketed as the perfect alternative to chocolates and flowers. 1 2 Some offer returns linked to length of matrimony . And many stipulate that only the woman can collect on them. 3 Of course “insurance” is largely in the eye of the beholder , in any society: in the west, diamonds are not just a girl’s best friend, they are also a girl’s best insurance policy. In these days of upside-down mortgages, at least the ring has a surrender value 4 higher than zero. But in China, notions of risk and how to insure against it are even more 5 malleable : after decades when citizens relied on a combination of children and communism to take care of them when things got rough, insurance 6 penetration is still exceptionally low, even to protect against those staple s of Chinese life, illness and car accidents. Chinese insurance companies offer a baffling7 array8 of policies, from life 9 policies wit