Woman Finds a Note From an Abused Chinese Factory Worker in the Purse She Bought
Fox – A woman in Arizona said she made a stunning discovery inside a new purse she bought at a Walmart: A note apparently written by a desperate prisoner in China.
Laura Wallace found the message, written in Chinese, tucked inside the zipper compartment of the purse she purchased at a Sierra Vista Walmart, KVOA reported.
Wallace had a Chinese-speaking person translate the note to English. The letter read:
“Inmates in the Yingshan Prison in Guangxi, China are working 14 hours daily with no break/rest at noon, continue working overtime until 12 midnight, and whoever doesn’t finish his work will be beaten. Their meals are without oil and salt. Every month, the boss pays the inmate 2000 yuan, any additional dishes will be finished by the police. If the inmates are sick and need medicine, the cost will be deducted from the salary. Prison in China is unlike prison in America, horse cow goat pig dog (literally, means inhumane treatment).” …
Wallace said she wanted to share the note to bring awareness to the situation.
“I don’t want this to be an attack on any store,” Wallace said. “That’s not the answer. This is happening at all kinds of places and people just probably don’t know.” …
Similar notes reportedly have turned up in items sold at stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and K-Mart in the past.
I’m totally feeling Laura Wallace on this one. When you get a note stuffed into something you bought from some desperate factory worker on the other side of the globe suffering from horse cow goat pig dog, what can you do? It’s like finding a note in a bottle on the beach from someone stranded on an island someplace. You feel bad, but what can you do about it? Call the State Department and tell them to tell China to knock it off? Arm yourself and go in there to bust them out like in Rambo II? Call Jack Bauer?
Life is awful for a lot of people. Like Maximus says in Gladiator, “I’ve seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark. Rome is the light.” And practically every time you buy something, you’re part of the equation that keeps the horse cow goat pig dog cycle going. None of us is without sin on this one. That engagement ring you bought probably has a blood diamond on it. That hybrid car you bought to save the planet has a battery filled with zinc that was strip mined. The thousands who marched on Washington against Global Warming didn’t ride bikes or solar cars to get there. Everyone likes to talk a good game about reigning in mega-corporations, but ask the Occupy crowd to give up their phones made by child laborers who jump off the factory roofs and see how far you get.
I don’t know what else anyone can do. Buy local I guess. I’m sure there are handbag places around where things are handmade by people who get to have lunch breaks and go home every night. But that’ll only get you so far. It’s not like there’s a small business in town where some craftsman is putting together TVs and cellphones. And when I need socks and underwear, I’m going to Walmart, not waiting around for Chinese laborers to organize and fight for humane working conditions like our forefathers did. I’m going to buy the stuff I need for as good a price as I can and try to forget the horse cow goat pig dog that produced it. And I’m going to thank God I’m an American.