Book Review: Fortune Cookie Chronicles

Harriet Little - Roanoke Times & World News

Jun 19, 2008

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
By Jennifer 8. Lee.

"The Fortune Cookie Chronicles" begins on March 30, 2005, when an amazing number of people around the country won large prizes in a Powerball drawing. Lottery officials first suspected fraud -- how could so many people come up with the winning sequences of numbers?

The surprising answer was that the winning numbers had appeared in fortune cookies from Chinese restaurants across the nation.

Author Jennifer 8. Lee, a New York Times reporter, went on a search, not of Chinese cuisine but of the take-out culture and the cooking of American Chinese restaurants. She writes of learning about the Powerball-fortune-cookie-connected winners: "I read about the Powerball winners on the subway ... Right there on the subway, I decided to follow those fortune cookies back to their source. ... Following the Powerball fortune cookie trail, I believed, was something that would help me unravel the nagging question of Chinese food in America."

Traveling extensively, Lee learned about the philosophies of Chinese food in America.

She quotes Tommy Wong who has, with his brothers, owned restaurants for 35 years: "A driving force behind Chinese cooking is the desire to adapt and incorporate indigenous ingredients and utilize Chinese cooking techniques.

At Wong's restaurant near New Orleans, the author ate Szechuan alligator, emphasizing Wong's ideas.

Lee also searched for the origins of the fortune cookie itself. She describes the San Francisco debate in 1983 over whether the fortune cookie originated in that city or in Los Angeles (the judge decided for San Francisco). And, further, did the fortune cookie even come from a Chinese rather than a Japanese tradition? Desserts in Chinese cooking are "pretty bad" according to Lee who adds, "There is a reason Chinese cuisine has a worldwide reputation for wontons, and not for pastries."

Lee investigates the origin of chop suey, which is, as most of us know, not a Chinese dish at all; and she includes General Tso's chicken, and chow mein, "the chosen food of the chosen people." She also examines the differences between "human smuggling" and "human trafficking."

Toward the end of her book Lee writes, "This book began as a quest to understand Chinese food. But three years, six continents, twenty-three countries, and forty-two states later, I realize it was actually a personal journey to understand myself."

She muses on immigration, education, and, of course, Chinese food in a well-documented and fascinating book.

----

More book reviews

Shop for books in the Military.com Entertainment Store

Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion