Origins of the Fortune Cookie - Essay Example

Origins of the Fortune Cookie A fortune cookie refers to the crisp cookie made with flour, sugar, vanilla and sesame seed oil as ingredients and with a fortune wrapped inside, usually a piece of paper that may contain words of wisdom, a vague prophecy, or an aphorism. Occasionally, the fortune may also be a translation of a given Chinese phrase or a list of somewhat lucky numbers that sometimes become winning lottery numbers. Fortune cookies have been famed as dessert in Chinese restaurants across the U.S. and in other countries around the world but are totally absent in China, which further accentuates the mystery behind the origin of the cookie. However, despite the massive uncertainty surrounding the origins of the fortune cookie, many Americans believe that the cookie is a Chinese product, thus, this essay will provide a brief history of the fortune cookie in America to try and explain who really created it, where they created it, and how it became associated with Chinese people and Chinese food. Similarly, this essay will encompass a personal perspective on the matter regarding whether the fortune cookie is Chinese or American while giving proof from existing discourses on cultural texts. Several myths surround the origin of the fortune cookie; for instance, several migrant groups in California are thought to have popularized the fortune cookie at the beginning of the 20th century drawing recipes from the traditional Japanese cracker. The dominant culture associated with the fortune cookies is undoubtedly the Chinese culture given that the cookies have become a trademark of the Chinese restaurants in the U.S. and an inseparable accompaniment of the Chinese food (Lee). Furthermore, many U.S. Americans consider fortune cookies to be a Chinese relic and a symbol of the Chinese culture only to discover on their travels to China that the fortune cookie does not accompany meals there. Similarly, many Chinese discover fortune cookies for the first time on their visits to America and are surprised that they are not found back in China; presently, a Chinese-American restaurant based in San Francisco claims to have been the inventor of fortune cookie in 1918 by putting scriptures in the cookies and giving them to the poor. Another myth goes that the cookie originated in China during the Mongol rule when Chinese patriots hid messages in moon cakes to manage forces against invaders; moreover, it is also argued that the fortune cookie was invented in America in 1914 by a Japanese-American that baked cookies with thank-you notes at a Japanese Tea Garden in Garden Gate Park. Increasingly, fortune cookies have been understood as having been introduced by the Japanese, made popular by the Chinese but enjoyed largely by the Americans in the numerous Chinese restaurants in the U.S. all over the world, the cookies are known by their English term “fortune cookies”. However, there is no consensus on any particular Chinese name for the cookies since the Chinese merely have several literary transitions of the English “fortune cookie” such as “good luck lot cookie” or “fortune words cookie”. Fortune cookies are a major cultural symbol in the American society, inspiring several other products such as fortune-cookie-shaped jewellery and the fortune-cookie-shaped magic 8 ball among others. There are nearly 3 billion fortune cookies manufactured each year, many of which are consumed in the U.S. and the leading manufacturers of the cookies are the Brooklyn-based firm Wonton Food Inc and the Los Angeles-based manufacturer Peking Noodle. It is an indubitable fact that America has more Chinese restaurants than McDonalds, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets, in Lee’s words, which shades insights on the history of Chinese cuisines in the country (Lee 9). In her book, Lee advances the argument that despite popular beliefs, a vast proportion of what is commonly known as Chinese food is all American and little is known about them back in China. In that respect, it logically follows that common cuisines such as beef with broccoli (an Italian vegetable), egg rolls, General Tso’s chicken, chop suey, and fortune cookies are all American foods. Born and raised in a Chinese family, Lee discloses that since her thirteenth birthday, she had known that the fortune cookie was actually not Chinese as commonly believed, which was a an unsettling revelation to her young mind. It is clear from her chronicles that the major manufacturers of fortune cookies are indeed American like the Wonton Food based in New York and the messages are crafted with bits of wisdom that are tailored to the American audiences. Furthermore, the chronicles also explain that fortune cookies are not so much loved in Asia, which totally demystifies the theory that could have originated in China. A fortune cookie is undoubtedly a vital Chinese cultural artefact in the American society and the fortune cookie sayings are equally important cultural texts, where struggles over meaning, identity, and power occur. Key terms that feature greatly in discourses of cultural texts include the concepts of dominant and non-dominant culture, cross-cultural perspective, interdisciplinarity as well as manifest destiny. A dominant culture is the established gold standard of society as a whole or the most powerful, prevalent and influential group of society while non-dominant culture refers to the marginalized groups. In the American context, the dominant culture stresses individualism, personal power, strict schedules, nuclear families, youthfulness, and gender roles, among other things, unlike the non-dominant culture that believes in collectivism, fate, human interaction, blended roles, elderliness, expressiveness among other things. A cross-cultural perspective is a view that combines or contrasts two or more cultures or cultural groups while interdisciplinarity entails combining insights from two or more academic disciplines in creating something new by crossing and thinking across boundaries. Manifest destiny refers to the pervasive 19th century belief in the U.S. that the American settlers were bound to occupy the entire continent; the core of manifest destiny was the belief in the superiority of the American racial superiority while Native Americans were largely regarded inferior. Fortune cookie sayings, instead of representing any particular group’s culture like that of Chinese Americans, they mediate other people’s views or perception of the specific culture; in other words, fortune cookies articulate practices as well as meanings while offering inter-textual experiences that enable audiences to consume new texts (Yin and Miike 21). Precisely, fortune cookies are a product of diasporic groups residing in another culture, thus, it can be argued that more than one culture contributed to their invention; clearly, fortune cookies are a hybridized cultural text which has been arrived at by fusing the American Dream and the Chinese upward mobility. Nonetheless, even though the fortune cookie is both American and Chinese, the cookie is predominantly American than Chinese, thus, the American culture is dominant while the Chinese culture is the non-dominant one. Nevertheless, the fortune cookie lies at the intersection of the two cultures from a cross-cultural perspective, which underpins the somewhat resistance to the pervasive manifest ideology of western domination and colonization (Yin and Miike 38). Nonetheless, the fortune cookie does still perpetuate the U.S American views, the White middle-class American ideology which heaps blame for social inequality on the individual; the Chinese cultural elements inherent in the cookie, the dominant Chinese ideology of upwards mobility through individual effort, also works to blind the non-dominant groups from their unequal situations. I believe the fortune cookie is undoubtedly American in all aspects, especially because little is known about fortune cookies back in China and even the Chinese find fortune cookies to be amazing discovery on their visit to the US. Fortune cookies may contain cultural aspects of the Chinese but are not Chinese since they bear and encapsulate the dominant U.S American views, the White middle-class American ideology of individual success at the expense of the group values and obligations. Furthermore, despite the attempts to infuse Chinese cultural aspects in the fortune cookie, it is only the dominant Chinese cultural ideology of upwards mobility for individuals that becomes infused with the American ideology, thus, the American culture does dominate over the Chinese culture. The American culture being the dominant group does control and produce cultural texts and messages that mainstream its own worldview and silencing all other dominant groups, which eventually become totally marginalized; after years of consuming the messages of the dominant group, all other dominant cultures internalize the values and ideologies of the dominant group, which they also start propagating. Ultimately, contrary to the universally held belief among most Americans that the fortune cookie is Chinese, the fortune cookie is indeed American in all aspects. The producers of the cookie may be American Chinese, but their product does little but infuses the dominant American and Chinese cultural values of the White middle class ideology and upwards mobility respectively. However, it is obvious that the fortune cookie is predominantly American than Chinese given that the American aspects clearly overshadow the Chinese values since the product is tailored to the American society. The fortune cookie is an essential aspect of the American culture since it mediates people’s views or perception of the Chinese culture. In other words, since fortune cookies are a product of diasporic groups residing in the U.S., the cookies are an important cultural artefact in the American society and the fortune cookie sayings are equally important cultural texts, where struggles over meaning, identity, and power occur. Works Cited Yin, Jing and Miike, Yoshitaka. “A Textual Analysis of Fortune Cookie Sayings: How Chinese Are They?” The Howard Journal of Communications, 19 (2008):18-43. Lee, Jennifer 8. “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food.” N.Y: Twelve Hachette Book Group. 2008. Print. Lee, Jennifer 8. “Solving a Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside a Cookie.” Nytimes.com. 2008. Web. 13 May 2013 Read More