April 9, 2012--Fortune Cookies

After visiting my mother, I said, "Let's go for Chinese food.

Eating Chinese food when visiting parents is an ingrained tradition among Jewish people who grew up in Brooklyn where all the Chinese restaurants seemed to be in Jewish neighborhoods. But in Florida, where most Chinese restaurants are undistinguished, it so happens that quite near where my mother lives there is a distinguished one, Silver Pond, which Rona correctly feels could do well even in New York's competitive Chinatown.

So we did a twofer--first we had a sweet visit with my mother then we indulged ourselves in shrimp dumplings, soy sauce noodles (dry), baby bok choy, and beef with Chinese eggplant.

After packing up a box of leftovers to take home, the waiter brought us Silver Pond's traditional plate of quartered oranges and fortune cookies.

Rona pounced on her cookie while I sucked on the orange slices.

"Read this," she said, waving the sliver of paper on which the fortune was printed. "'When you feel defensive,'" she read out loud, "'examine what you fear.' What does yours say?"

In truth I don't like fortune cookies--neither the cookie itself nor the fortunes. I don't believe in them--they seem silly to me.

"Go on. Don't be such a grouch. Open yours."

Without enthusiasm I did and out slid my fortune. I brushed off the crumbs and passed it over to Rona, who, exasperated, snatched it and read--"Enjoyed the meal? Buy one to go too." She looked over to me, still with my face buried in orange rind. "I couldn't have said it better. You can never get enough Chinese food, even agreeing to take home doggy bags, which everywhere else you refuse to do. Now do you believe in these fortunes?"

I didn't get either Rona's or the fortune's meaning, but said, "Turn it over. On the back I think they give you numbers you can use when playing Mega Millions. Let me see." She passed it back to me. "On mine they are 51, 6, 22, 36, 46, 43. If we had played these in the recent drawing that paid out more than $600 million we would have had enough money to order Peking Duck."

"Let me have that," Rona took the slip from me--she had played the big lottery last week and got three or four numbers and won ten dollars. "I don't remember the winning number but I do recall the Mega Ball was 23. So your numbers would not have made us rich."

"But though the numbers are not 'lucky' as advertised," I teased her, "you still believe in the fortune?"

"I admit your fortune is silly but mine, don't you think, is a little profound?" She read hers again, "When you feel defensive examine what you fear. Not bad, right?"

I couldn't help but agree.

Then, as is my inclination, when we got home, I did a little research about fortune cookies, turning to the wonderful Wikipedia, from which I learned:

As far back as the 19th century, a cookie very similar in appearance to the modern Fortune cookie was made in Kyoto, Japan, and there is a Japanese temple tradition of random fortunes, called omikuji. The Japanese version of the cookie differs in several ways: they are a little bit larger; are made of darker dough; and their batter contains sesame and miso rather than vanilla and butter. They contain a fortune; however, the small slip of paper was wedged into the bend of the cookie rather than placed inside the hollow portion.

Most of the people who claim to have introduced the cookie to the United States are Japanese, so the theory is that these bakers were modifying a cookie design which they were aware of from their days in Japan.

Makoto Hagiwara of Golden Gate Park's Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco is reported to have been the first person in the USA to have served the modern version of the cookie when he did so at the tea garden in the 1890s or early 1900s.

David Jung, founder of the Hong Kong Noodle Company in Los Angeles, has made a competing claim that he invented the cookie in 1918. San Francisco's mock Court of Historical Review attempted to settle the dispute in 1983. During the proceedings, a fortune cookie was introduced as a key piece of evidence with a message reading, "S.F. Judge who rules for L.A. Not Very Smart Cookie". A federal judge of the Court of Historical Review determined that the cookie originated with Hagiwara and the court ruled in favor of San Francisco. Subsequently, the city of Los Angeles condemned the decision.

Seiichi Kito, the founder of Fugetsu-do of Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, also claims to have invented the cookie. Kito claims to have gotten the idea of putting a message in a cookie from Omikuji (fortune slips) which are sold at temples and shrines in Japan. According to his story, he sold his cookies to Chinese restaurants where they were greeted with much enthusiasm in both the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas.

Fortune cookies moved from being a confection dominated by Japanese-Americans to one dominated by Chinese-Americans sometime around World War II. One theory for why this occurred is because of the Japanese American internment during World War II, which forcibly put over 100,000 Japanese-Americans in internment camps, including those who had produced fortune cookies. This gave an opportunity for Chinese manufacturers.

Fortune cookies before the early 20th century, however, were all made by hand. The fortune cookie industry changed dramatically after the fortune cookie machine was invented by Shuck Yee from Oakland, California. The machine allowed for mass production of fortune cookies which subsequently allowed the cookies to drop in price to become the novelty and courtesy dessert many Americans are familiar with after their meals at most Chinese restaurants today.

"Pretty fascinating, no?" I said to Rona after reading this to her. "You have me half convinced that fortune cookies are not really silly. They have an interesting history."

She smiled at me, "Why don't you do a little more research to see if my fortune from dinner comes from Confucius because I think that classically--if I can use that word for this--most do."

So I did. And indeed Rona's fortune was quite Confucian.

Here are a few others, straight from Confucius himself--

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.

Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon and star.

It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do.

What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.

They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.

So there you are.

Next time we're at Silver Pond, I'll be sure to check my fortune cookie and plan to use the numbers when playing Mega Millions. One never knows . . .