Big in China: Murder Villages and Scam Towns

Many Chinese towns have grown fat off of single industries. Much of the world’s hosiery, for example, comes from the village of Datang, also known as “Sock City.” Songxia is dedicated to umbrellas. Jinjiang is all about zippers.

And Shisun, for a time, made a killing off of killing. Last provoked dismay in Hunan province, but not shock; similar gangs have been caught in , Henan, and Sichuan provinces. Indeed, the type of murder conspiracy seen in Shisun is so common that it has its own nickname: , after the film (“”), which details a similar scheme. Like the movie’s characters, Shisun’s plotters killed migrant miners—staging each man’s death as a mining accident—then posed as grieving family members. Corrupt mine bosses in turn paid these impostor “families” hush money, rather than risk any investigation into working conditions. The scam was grisly but profitable—each death could net as much as $120,000, an unimaginable sum in a country where the average rural family’s annual income is $1,800. The new concrete houses that line the mud-brick village’s main street are a testament to the windfall.