Do y
\nou ever have one of those days when lunch is the high point of the day, not because lunch was great but because the rest of the day wasn\u2019t? Yeah, those days. As in: this day. Today I had lunch at a faux Chinese restaurant that was nestled between a used tire shop and a tattoo parlor. Naturally, a fortune cookie came after the meal.<\/p>\n
Instead of paying the check and rushing back into the world, I decided to pour another cup of tea and hunker down with my fortune cookie. After all maybe, just maybe, it would offer some sort of wisdom. So as I unwrap this fortune cookie, awaiting my rendezvous with destiny, I\u2019ll note something that you already know: Chinese fortune cookies aren\u2019t really Chinese.<\/p>\n
The fortune cookie was invented in California about a century ago. Beyond that, though, there\u2019s not much to go on. FactMonster.com mentions two likely candidates for the inventor. One is David Jung, a Chinese immigrant who lived in Los Angeles. The other is Makoto Hagiwara, a Japanese immigrant who lived in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
As for modern times, FactMonster reports that the largest fortune cookie company is Wonton Food Inc., situated in New York, which ships out 60 million cookies a month.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a lot of fortune cookie printing. To put that number in perspective, The Wall Street Journal has a paid circulation of about 2.3 million.<\/p>\n
So the print medium isn\u2019t dead. It has just changed format from column-inches to dessert.<\/p>\n
As for the fortune thing, cookies aren\u2019t the only way to dispense them in a restaurant. A television show, The Twilight Zone, had a 1960 episode titled \u201cNick of Time\u201d in which a guy becomes obsessed with a fortune telling machine in a diner. That show was created before I was, but those old shows are easily found in DVD collections these days.<\/p>\n
The actor in the \u201cNick of Time\u201d episode, William Shatner, went on to reach fame as Captain Kirk in the \u201cStar Trek\u201d TV series, so we can say that his fortunes turned out for the better.<\/p>\n
But what about mine?<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll soon see. Here in the restaurant, I\u2019m cracking open my cookie and awaiting my rendezvous with fate.<\/p>\n
I see that the fortune comes in three lines.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s Line No. 1: \u201cYou need a new environment. Go on vacation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, just hold on a minute. I already am in a new environment. In fact, I just got here. And now the cookie wants to push me out again? That doesn\u2019t make sense. Maybe this cookie was meant for another patron. The waitress probably mixed things up. I had the feeling she wasn\u2019t concentrating.<\/p>\n
But just to be safe I\u2019d better hedge my bets and buy a lotto ticket. This brings me to the next line of my fortune.<\/p>\n
Line No. 2: \u201cLucky # 1, 7, 38, 56, 39, 26.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if the luck behind these numbers will be diluted if you use them, too, but I didn\u2019t see any warnings or disclaimers to that effect, so I\u2019ll have to assume we\u2019re OK on this note.<\/p>\n
And now we arrive at the last line. This one is educational.<\/p>\n
Line No. 3 says, \u201cLearn Chinese: Fish,\u201d followed by the Chinese word for fish (\u201c yu\u201d), followed by the Chinese character for fish.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m in familiar waters on this one, because the \u201cyu\u201d sound has many meanings in Chinese, depending on inflection (tone) and context. I\u2019m the go-to guy for fish words. That\u2019s because I botched the inflection during a presentation in Chinese class. The topic was real estate. I thought I was saying \u201capartment,\u201d but I was actually saying \u201cpublic fish.\u201d For the remainder of the semester I was the professor\u2019s point-to poster-child for the pitfalls of tonal turpitude.<\/p>\n
There are, as it turns out, two methods to learn spoken Chinese. One way is to lurch from humiliation to humiliation, in which words are etched into your memory like scars, because they pretty much are.<\/p>\n
The other way is, well, actually, I don\u2019t know any other way. But I have to hold out the prospect that one exists, at least in theory, just to keep open-minded about the gig.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s something else I\u2019ll mention: The reverse side of the fortune is blank. Blank! This space is begging to be used as a juicy canvas for advertising. We already know something about the demographic of the medium: it eats Chinese food in restaurants. Furthermore, it\u2019s offering at least 60 million views every month.<\/p>\n
Ah, when such thoughts come to mind, it means that recess is over. It\u2019s time to go back to work. The fortune cookie has served its purpose. No, it didn\u2019t deliver any wisdom. But it did amuse me long enough to take my mind off everything for a bit, and, on some days, that\u2019s all the fortune you can get. Hopefully, it\u2019s all the fortune that you need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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