The Fortune Cookie Chronicles - Book Report/Review Example

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles Jennifer 8. Lee, a reporter at “The New York Times” for a period of 9 years had great obsession for Chinese food. This obsession made her come up with the book “The Fortune of Cookie Chronicles” in which she makes an exploration about the introduction of Chinese food in America. In this exploration, she traveled extensively and interviewed numerous people in her quest for this understanding. The Fortune cookies that are assumed to be of Chinese origin have gained tremendous popularity in the American culture yet there origin has been established as Japanese. Part 1 New York City was Lee’s birth place but her parents came from a tiny island near the coast of China. In this regard, she can be referred to as an American-born Chinese. Together with her two siblings, her sister and her brother, they were encouraged by their parents to embrace America even though they mostly practiced Chinese culture in their house hold. It startled her that the traditional foods cooked by her mother back at home was far different from the food packed in little white takeout boxes at Chinese restaurants. This was the ultimate factor that led to her exploration. This exploration took her a three years journey to 42 states and 23 countries. At the age of 13, she realized that the fortune cookies were not Chinese. Her ultimate findings were that fortune cookies have an American origin. However, the main debate was about who invented the fortune cookies and their actual place of origin. She was able to find out that this stalemate had appeared sometime back in 1983 when Judge Daniel M. Hanlon was to rule on an court case between two contingents; one from Los Angeles who claimed that fortune cookie was invented by David Jung, a Chinese immigrant who was known in Los Angels as the founder Hong Kong Noodle Company before World War I, and another from San Francisco who claimed that the fortune cookies were invented by Makoto Hagiwara, a Japanese immigrant who was known to tend the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park before World War I. The Judge ruled against the Los Angeles contingent after Sally Osaki, an employee in San Francisco produced the only physical evidence to support the San Francisco contingent. Sally Osaki happened to have conducted research in support of the Japanese contingent and had come up with a set of round black iron grills that were established to have originally been used by Hagiwara family in the preparation of the fortune cookies. However, this was not the ultimate solution to the stalemate. An additional confusing factor was that over the millennia, there were so many inventions and concepts that the Japanese people had borrowed from the Chinese people people including soy sauce, written language, as well as chopsticks. The question she asked herself was whether the fortune cookies were the only thing that occurred in the reverse. Therefore, she was left wondering what the actual facts were. The fortune cookies were liked by everybody and made high revenues for the Chinese restaurants in America yet every Chinese-American child would confirm that Traditional Chinese desserts were pretty bad. Being in this category Lee was pretty sure of what she meant by this point. Part 2 The whole thing about the growing demand for the Fortune cookies began during the powerball drawing that occurred on 30th March 2005 where it turned out that an inordinate quantity of the winning lottery tickets were realized as the lucky numbers were found in the fortune cookies in the entire country. When this happened, the lottery officials suspected fraud since 110 people had 5 out of 6 of the numbers in the lottery. Later on, some restaurants produced cookies that had words of wisdom signaling the end of all Chinese restaurant meal. A few years ago, there were restaurants which included lucky numbers in the fortunes cookies. For instance, North-American Chinese restaurants served their customers with fortune cookies with numbers 22, 28, 32, 33, and 39. Some also contained number 40 which was the only incorrect number in the powerball draw of 30th March 2005. Therefore, people regarded fortune cookies highly and would follow the advice in the words of wisdom found on the cookies while playing the lottery. They believed that these words were the solutions to winning the lottery. As these trends continued growing in the restaurant industry, it occurred that any restaurant intending to make high revenues, it had to adopt the Japanese cookies which had the “fortune” aspect overwhelmingly attached to it. Besides this aspect of “Fortune”, it also occurred that the cookies were also sweet and that the traditional Chinese desserts were not sweet in taste as they were produced with less fat and sugar, a lot of lotus and red beans, sesame and peanuts, soy and almond. Therefore, for these restaurants to continue sustaining themselves in the industry, they had to resort to the Japanese desserts that proved to be relatively sweet as a result of its preparation mechanisms. Under normal circumstances, people would rather take Japanese than Chinese cookies. In order to please their customers, these restaurants had to produce the fortune cookie that earned itself great reputation and demand in the American market. The major production was in Los Angels and San Francisco and later in New York. Continual development of these trends led to these cookies being used in several occasions and ceremonies including announcement of engagements. The fortune cookie boxes were also sold on supermarket shelves. Statistically, by 1950s, 250 million fortune cookies were consumed by Americans on annual basis. This meant that these cookies were gaining grounds in the American culture. This happened to such an extend that they were used by Senator Adlai Stevenson and Stuart Symington in their campaigns in 1960. Others like Abraham Beame and Richard Daley also later used it. In essence, Lee uses two parallel concepts in unraveling her main contextual message. She connects the manner in which the lottery was played and the enormous demand that was developed about the fortune cookies. The fortune cookies grew in popularity in America as a result of the March 30, 2005 powerball lottery draw. An unexplainable number of people won the lottery through the fortune cookies country wide resulting into the belief that the fortune cookies had some relationship with the concept of “fortune”. Anyone buying the cookies while playing the lottery believed that he or she had a greater chance of success. As the cookies became famous, the more they were included in many of the American cultural practices. The Chinese restaurants took advantage of this growing demand to make and distribute the fortune cookies making these Japanese pastries as their signature desserts. Currently, it is reported that there are more Chinese food restaurants in America the all the other restaurants combined including McDonalds, Burger Kings, Wendys, Kentucky Fried Chicken and many others. Therefore, these two concepts have played an important role in the development of this book since they justify the tremendous growth of demand for the Japanese pastries in the American culture. In the book, Lee generally shows how the presumable Chinese food has largely been Americanized. The book begins by showing how Americans related the success of the lottery to the fortune cookies and develops into showing the tremendous changes in the demand for these cookies. These does not go without asking questions about the origin of the Fortune cookies because of the unexplainable difference between the taste of the fortune cookies and the traditional Chinese cuisines under which the fortune cookies should fall. In her quest to unravel this mystery, Lee finds out that the cookies have a Japanese origin. Works Cited Lee, Jennifer 8. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. New York: Twelve, 2008. Print. Read More