By Gary Dickson
My wife brought home some takeout Chinese food one night last week, complete with the fortune cookies. Like many people, I have always been excited to read my fortune from my fortune cookie. I am not exactly sure why; I suppose it”s just fun to see what is printed on the little piece of paper that was baked inside the cookie and, if it says something good, hope that it comes true.
Of course, a huge number of fortune cookies are made every year and distributed all over the world. To believe that the one we get after eating in a local Chinese restaurant actually pertains specifically to us is kind of like believing the fortune on the old weight scales you slipped a penny in to get your weight and fortune or to put stock in what you received after asking a question and shaking a Magic 8-ball for its answer. Nonetheless, like I said, when the fortune we get is positive, regardless of the source, we”d like to think it will come true.
I was all excited when I read the fortune from my cookie last week. It stated, “Everything will now come your way.” I was elated. Being an optimist, I took it that my investments would make me money, I would do well on the job, be healthy and everything would be peachy. My wife, not a pessimist, but not usually as optimistic as me, looked at it the opposite way. Her feeling was that I should get ready to duck, because all kinds of bullets are going to start flying at me. I guess now I am prepared for anything, good or bad.
The exact origin of the fortune cookie is a little cloudy. There is one possibility that they began in 14th century China. According to the Library of Congress a Taoist priest supposedly stuffed messages inside Chinese moon cakes to get messages to Chinese rebels who were fighting the marauding Mongols. One New York Times article stated that the fortune cookie”s beginning was tied to Hyotanyama Japan in the 1800s.
As it is with the origin of fortune cookies in world history, there is an argument about where they first began in the United States, too. One source says San Francisco is the birthplace of the modern fortune cookie and another says it was in Los Angeles. The San Francisco start was by someone of Japanese ancestry and the L.A. cookies were from a Chinese-American.
In 1914 Makato Hagiwara, of Japanese ancestry, began serving fortune cookies with tea in San Francisco at what eventually became known as the Golden Gate Park Japanese Tea Garden. The Los Angeles story points to 1918 when David Tsung, the owner of the Hong Kong Noodle Company started serving cookies that included a Bible passage to his customers. It seems like there has always been a San Francisco/Los Angeles rivalry.
If the U.S. origin is debatable, the spread of fortune cookies across this country is not. When U.S. soldiers returning from action in the Pacific Theater during World War II got home, wherever that was, they would ask the proprietor of their local Chinese restaurant why they didn”t serve fortune cookies like the restaurants in San Francisco did. Before long fortune cookies had become commonplace everywhere in America. By the 1950s 250 million fortune cookies were being distributed annually.
Today there are more than 3 billion Chinese food fortune cookies made per year. They now appear in England, Italy, Mexico and India, but if you travel to China , don”t expect to get a fortune cookie with your bill for food. Chinese food restaurants in China don”t give out Chinese fortune cookies.
Fortune cookies are a wonderful conversation device toward the end of a meal in a Chinese restaurant and really not much more. So, I feel pretty confident that, whether good or bad, not everything is going to be coming my way.
Gary Dickson is the publisher of the Record-Bee. Call him at 263-5636, ext. 24. Email him at gdickson@record-bee.com.
