Even Running Away Was So Cool
There had been no shortage of news reports about American Airlines' discriminatory behavior: Chinese American couples being kicked off planes for bringing their children, a girl being barred from boarding because she had a cello, Chinese passengers' boarding passes being torn up due to overbooking, and so on.
Yesterday, Jiang Hao had looked up the insurance company responsible for American Airlines on his phone. Sure enough, it was one of his boss's own businesses.
Thinking about it, that made sense. The insurance industry was incredibly profitable. Of the Fortune 500 companies, sixty were insurance companies. The most formidable of them was Berkshire Hathaway, the company owned by investment guru Warren Buffett.
Many major companies had entered the insurance business, and China was no exception. Financial firms, Internet companies, even real estate companies had all rushed into insurance, especially within their own industrial chains. Alibaba and Tencent, for example, both had their own insurance companies.
Insurance companies thrived on cash. They pooled everyone's money into a fund, managed it, collected management fees, and then used that money for investments to make even more.
American Airlines was the world's largest airline, carrying more than 200 million passengers every year. Every passenger's ticket included insurance costs, making insurance one of their very important sources of revenue.
For this plane crash, the airline's insurance company would probably have to pay four or five hundred million US Dollars in compensation. How could the boss not feel the pain? As for Jiang Hao, discrimination combined with a desire to save money was the main reason American Airlines had treated him this way.
Not long after Ryan left, a nurse came in and said to Jiang Hao, "Hello, sir. Your room has already been checked out. Congratulations on being discharged. I'm