The Truth About Fortune Cookies

Welcome back to Spaghetti In China! Today we will talk about the fortune cookies. 

When you go to a Chinese restaurant you generally receive one of them at the end of your meal ant you curiously open to see what written in the little paper inside the famous cookie. 

I have to admit that, when I was younger I was literally dying to know what the quote inside it would have “told” me, now I’m just curious.

 

The fortune cookies are from a long time considered as Chinese icon, but are they really from China?

The answer is no! 

The story of these popular cookies connects three different cultures: Japanese, American and Chinese.

 

It is said to be a Japanese creation, borrowed from Chinese and deeply American. Let’s find out why!

Everything starts in Japan, where some tea shops started selling these cookies called “tsujura senbei”(please don’t ask me about the pronunciation) in which inside there was a paper with a message. A part from the shops, these crackers were mostly sold close Shintoist temples, bringing a fortune message that, differently from what we see today, had as its content a poetry. 

 

The original cookies were different from how we know them now. They were bigger, with a different shape and, because of the sesame used to make them, even darker. The paper was fold inside in a way to make it difficult for people to choke by eating it. 

 

The question now is: how did they arrive to be a recognized as Chinese symbol??

It is said that the cookies arrived to USA during the migration due to the World War 1 and they started being sold in some Chinese restaurants. 

What happened next? During World War 2 the tension between USA and Japan was really strong, especially because of what happened in Pearl Harbour, so all the Japanese people living in the United States of America were confined and forced to hide, because considered as enemy of the country. 

Chinese people did not wait and took advantage of the situation, taking the control of the cookies production and never letting it go from that moment on.

 

Now there are some disputes about who is the creator of these world-famous snacks, especially American companies, but nobody really received an official recognition.

 

what do you think about it? Did you already know the story? For me it was pretty shocking to discover all this in few hours of research, I thought they were American, I had no idea about the Japanese origins.

 

Let me know what you think and how you feel about it now that you know the truth!