The letter drew international news media coverage and widespread attention to China's opaque system of "re-education through labor," a collection of penal colonies where petty criminals, religious offenders and critics of the government can be given up to four-year sentences by the police without trial.
But the letter writer remained a mystery, the subject of speculation over whether he or she was a real inmate or a creative activist simply trying to draw attention to the issue.
Last month, though, during an interview to discuss China's labor camps, a 47-year-old former inmate at the Masanjia camp said he was the letter's author. The man, a Beijing resident and adherent of Falun Gong, the outlawed spiritual practice, said it was one of 20 such letters he secretly wrote over the course of two years. He then stashed them inside products whose English-language packaging, he said, made it likely they were destined for the West.
"For a long time I would fantasize about some of the letters being discovered overseas, but over time I just gave up hope and forgot about them," said the man, who asked that only his surname, Zhang, be published for fear of reprisal.
He knew well the practices of the camp in question, which was corroborated by other inmates, and he spoke as other inmates did of their work preparing mock tombstones. His handwriting and modest knowledge of English matched those of the letter, although it was impossible to know for sure whether there were perhaps other letter writers, one of whose messages might have reached Oregon.