One of my first days in Chinese class in college I asked my professor who was from mainland China where fortune cookies came from in her country. She said, "what's a fortune cookie?" I said, "well, they're Chinese good luck cookies that they give out at all Chinese restaurants." Duh, I was thinking, how could she not know what fortune cookies are, she's from China! I brought one in for her to see. She opened it and thought it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen. This was the first time and not the last that I realized I had a lot to learn about China.
I recently read a new book called The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee (yes, 8. is her middle name). The author, Jennifer, investigates the origins of Chinese food as it exists in America and why it is so different than traditional Chinese food. She opens the book with a story about the winners of a 2005 Powerball lottery. Normally there about 2-3 people who pick all the correct numbers and win the pot, but on this particular drawing 110 people all picked the winning numbers! The lottery commission knew this huge amount of winners couldn't be a group of cheaters because the winners were from all over the country. It turned out that the winners had all eaten at Chinese restaurants and played the numbers they received in their fortune cookies. In the book she travels all over the country interviewing the winners of the lottery and the Chinese-American owners of the restaurants where the cookies were served. She even goes to China to the birthplace of General Tso to find out about his chicken and digs through old court case trademark documents in California to find who invented the fortune cookie. What emerges out off all this is a comprehensive and hilarious picture of the profound effect Chinese food has had on American culture and how Chinese food has morphed into something unique and new here in the states, for example: Spicy Szechuan Alligator served at a Cajun-Chinese restaurant outside New Orleans.
The book is well researched but also very entertaining; it had me laughing out loud. Check out her video on TED where she talks about the book and her process writing it. Since its publication, Jennifer has been on the Martha Stewart show teaching Martha how to make turkey dumplings and held own against Stephen Colbert. I finally learned where fortune cookies are from: Japan of all places, brought over from Japanese immigrants. So how did fortune cookies become "Chinese?" As Jennifer puts in a presentation (featured in the video above) "Well, we locked up all the Japanese during World War II including those that made fortune cookies. So that's about the time the Chinese moved in, kind of saw a market opportunity and took over!"
-Nate