May is Asian heritage month in the U.S. and Canada, but most of us probably celebrate the Asian diaspora year-round by enjoying one of the greatest gifts from the other edge of the Pacific Rim: Asian food. But sometimes, in our uncommon hurry to enjoy the ramen or the curry, we may find ourselves slurping up all kinds of bad takes along with our good takeout. Ken Jennings, of Jeopardy! fame is obviously not Asian, but (fun fact!) he grew up in Asia, which sort of qualifies him to set us straight on some of the biggest culinary misconceptions about the world's biggest continent. Check, please!
The Debunker: Where Do Fortune Cookies Come From?
Fortune cookies! Where else would you get great life advice like "☺ Your fondest dream will come true ☺ 07 22 31 43 05 30 "? A Chinese meal wouldn't be complete without this dessert that, mysteriously, nobody likes but nobody ever skips. Actually, I should correct that. Believe it or not, there is one place where you can eat Chinese food without fortune cookies appearing with the bill, and that's because no one there has ever even heard of them. That place is China.
That's right: Chinese people, who are by and large familiar with both fortunes and cookies, don't combine the two. In 1993, New York-based Wonton Food tried introducing them to China as "Genuine American Fortune Cookies." Sales were not auspicious. In 2002, when Yao Ming played his first game at Miami's American Airlines Arena, the Heat gave 8,000 fortune cookies out to fans at the game. Nobody likes seeing thousands of people communally enjoying racism during their first visit to a new city, but Yao wasn't offended. When he first arrived here from China, he told reporters, he didn't know what fortune cookies even were!
Three billion fortune cookies are now eaten every year in Chinese restaurants all around the world. The boom dates back to around 1910, when Japanese immigrants began to popularize the treat in California. Japanese folklore researcher Yasuko Nakamachi has traced the cookies back to small family bakeries in 19th-century Kyoto, which would pinch paper messages into the folded sesame wafers that they baked for visitors to nearby temples and shrines. Nobody knows how this Japanese novelty jumped cultures to became a Chinese-American staple, but let's keep looking! To quote a wise man, "You will find the knowledge that you seek 08 14 25 37 45 08"
Quick Quiz: Speaking of Fortune cookies, what cookie manufacturer was #82 on the very first Fortune 500 list, back in 1955?
Ken Jennings is the author of eleven books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.
(Editor's note: We made a slight change to keep things correct. Ken's human too, after all.)