Someone finds a note in a purse that was manufactured overseas. “The note claims the product had been made using forced labor or under poor working conditions. The writer of the note also claims to be in a faraway country, usually China. The shopper takes a photo of the note and posts it to social media. It’s reported on by all sorts of publications” and the story goes viral. This is actually a pretty common occurence. But then the news cycle moves on and and the note, whether real or fake, is quickly forgotten. Vox’s Rossalyn A. Warren decided to change the second half of the narrative with some good old fashioned investigative journalism. You buy a purse at Walmart. There’s a note inside from a “Chinese prisoner.” Now what? “The only way to make sense of this puzzle — one with actual human stakes that can help explain how what we buy is made — is to try to trace the journey backward, from the moment a note goes viral to its potential place of origin. Which is how I find myself in rural China, outside of a local prison, 7,522 miles away from where Christel first opened her purse.”