Chinese Prison Factory Pen Pals Are the Worst

A woman in Tucson found a secret note from a Chinese indentured factory worker tucked inside her recently purchased purse from Walmart. Roughly translated, the note said, it super sucks to be a locked down factory worker in China. More specifically, there were comments about the grueling hours, the prison camp like existence, the shitty pay, and the punishments for not meeting quotas. So, like your job, but ten percent worse.

The daughter-in-law of the woman who purchased the Walmart purse made the sorrowful note public to the local news as a means to do her part for shit upon Chinese workers:

“I don’t have the means or the access to help in any way. So I think this was my way of putting in my two cents.”

Well, you could not shop at Walmart. But those darned low low prices. 

Walmart spokespeople, who you have to imagine are supremely gifted at deflecting bad publicity, noted that nobody can be sure if the letter is authentic, though everybody agreed nobody with three hundred miles of Tucson speaks Chinese. Walmart insists they do not source any products from slave labor factories. Though if there’s a thinly veiled corporate go-between merely to meet international inspection standards, what can you do? Have you seen our bouncing yellow ball rolling back prices?

Herein lies the conundrum. Ladies in Asian factory towns making forty cents an hour and being denied toilet use are making most of the stupid shit Americans buy. Their cheap toil allows people of any reasonable income in the First World afford all kinds of crap. This isn’t at all new. Either you already know this or you don’t want to think about it.

You could stop buying this Southeast Asian beaten down factory worker shit, but then what happens to the lady writing the secret letters? She’s in the same predicament minus those forty cents per hour. They don’t upgrade her to a dream job in event marketing for Live Nation when the Walmart purse orders decline by thirty-percent. Probably prostitution. Or death. Or both. In no specific order.

Find a translator to write this woman back. Ink up the Mandarin signs for “I’m so fucking sorry I was born here and you were born there. There’s literally nothing I can do short of rescuing you and adopting you and that isn’t happening. I have cats. It’s hard to explain. Love my purse. Find yummy American Snickers bar enclosed.” Also, those two cents would be super helpful if you meant real pennies.