While out soaking in the amazing views on a recent visit out West, we stumbled upon a small sign indicating a "Chinese Laundry" was just down the road from a historic hotel. On a whim, we checked it out and found a fascinating little exhibit detailing the service roles fulfilled by Chinese immigrants of the 1800's (men doing laundry, cooking, and gardening).
Mixed in was a story of a semi-famous chef, Tie Sing, who would (circa 1915) write personalized messages to each guest in Chinese and English on their last evening tucked into pastry.
Now, I have long known that the idea of a 'Chinese Fortune Cookie' is not a real Chinese thing but rather an Americanism that only appears in Chinese restaurants in the United States. Thinking I had stumbled upon the origin story for 'Chinese' cookies, I did a little research upon our return. Turns out the origin is more Japanese than Chinese. Apparently the proto-fortune cookie first appeared in Japan in the 1870's and then was imported with Japanese immigration in the late 1800's and early 1900's, transforming into the version of the cookie we know by the 1910's. Japanese food was not yet popular in America but americanized Chinese food was really taking off, so many Japanese immigrants opened Chinese restaurants. Add on the internment of the Japanese during WWII and the general unpopularity of all things Japanese then (Even in the 1980's my American grandparents had friends who refused to ever eat in a Japanese restaurant!)... well the false association of this uniquely American cookie with China became complete. Around this time these "fortune tea cakes" became known as "fortune cookies"
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| By Ksayer1 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/ksayer/5452373550/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54564896 |
Only in America can it become de facto that you get a modified Japanese pastry with every order at a Chinese restaurant. So, if you see racist tropes that make use of the fortune cookie - know that the wrongness of it all is really much deeper than most realize...
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P.S. Later on this same trip we learned that the name of the park, "Yosemite", was derived from a derogatory term ("they are killers") a neighboring tribe had for the actual indigenous tribe of the park. How uniquely American is that?
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