The Fortune Cookie Chronicles (40 page)

In addition to the people who directly appeared in the book, I must thank those who gave me a significant body of leads in my research, including Betty Xie of
Chinese Restaurant News,
Cynthia Lee of the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, Harley Spil er for his amazing menu col ection, Indigo Som and her Chinese restaurant quest, and Jacqueline M. Newman of
Flavor and
Fortune.
I was inspired by the work of academics and other journalists: Ted Anthony, who first found General Tso’s family; Ko-Lin Chin, who studied Chinese smuggling and took the time to talk to me; Samantha Barbas, who examined chop suey in depth; Zai Liang, for his work on the Fujianese; Mimi Sheraton, for her early reviews on the great New York Chinese restaurants; Lisa Hsia, for her paper on the early days of Chinese restaurants; Cheuk Kwan, for his restaurant documentaries; and Peter Kwong, who wrote the first book that opened my eyes to the Chinese in America.

Many random Chinese restaurant tips made their way into the book from many sources: Paige Craig, for being the first to let me know about Chinese restaurants in the Baghdad Green Zone; Derek Shimoda, for fortune cookie leads; Gabriel Sherman, for the NASA tip; Roman Roman, for pointing me to Mexicali; Jonathan Zittrain, for the observations on Jewish bar and bat mitzvahs; Tom Scocca, who let me know about his col ege roommate’s grandfather who headed Fold-Pak; Andy Revkin, for putting me in contact with McMurdo Station in Antarctica; Alicia Mundy, who exclaimed, “You have to write about the kosher duck scandal!” as soon as she heard about my book.

On the library and research front, I thank Abby L. Yochelson of the Library of Congress for pul ing

many

documents;

Lynne

Oliver

of

foodtimeline.org for tracking down Fold-Pak when I could not; and Austin Lavin, Zak Stone, Lulu Zhou, Tim Wu, and Chris Thorpe for pul ing things that I didn’t have access to. And a very, very big thanks to Trey McArver for PDFing lots and lots of documents.

Many publishing industry people took the time to give me advice when I was stil figuring my way around: Liz Nagle, Ben Loehnen, Douglas Stewart, Jennifer Joel, Tim Duggan, and David Black.

A number of authors were generous with their advice: Warren St. John, Benoit Denizet-Lewis, Stephen Dubner, Sasha Issenberg, Dana Vachon, Alicia Mundy, Bob O’Harrow, Brendan I. Koerner, Taylor Clark, and Ben Wal ace.

Many people around the world helped me on a quixotic hunt for lucky numbers and the world’s greatest Chinese restaurant, either by opening up their homes, doing local research on my behalf, or both: Rose Murphy in Vancouver; Matthew Funk in Singapore; the Yguado family in New Mexico; Amy Morrow (now Gerlicher) and Ben Gerlicher in Phoenix; Antonio Regalado in Brazil; Thomas Crampton and Thuy-Tien Tran in Paris; Nikhil Chandra in London; Matthew Santaspirit in Rome; Gil ian Wu and her family in Toronto; Ben and Lydia Choi in the Bay Area; Bernard Chang in San Francisco; Janet Chang (now Tseng) and Kien-Wei Tseng in San Jose; Stephen and Ming Hsu Chen in the East Bay; Alice Chen in Chicago; Brendan Kredel in Chicago; Yilu Zhao in Boston; Steve Schwartz and his family in Mauritius; Jason Begay in Gal up, New Mexico; Chris Thorpe in Boston; Matt MacInnis in Beijing; Thomas Henningson in Shanghai; Mark Zavadskiy in Hong Kong; Walter Mil er in Mexico; Julio Vil enueva and Eugenia Mont in Peru; Patrick Ventrel in Colombia; Rungtip Tangparimonthon in Bangkok; Joshua Polacheck in the Dominican Republic; and Wang Wei in Changsha.

I’m thankful to those who helped with translating and local research: Fernanda Santos for Portuguese translation and tracking down Fong Yu; Iara Luchian for translating in Brazil; Emily Vasquez for help with Spanish; Juro Osawa for helping in Japanese; Yilu Zhao, Charlene Wang, and Mom for translating Chinese; Daniel Bloom for finding Chef Peng in Taiwan; Alexandra Lee in Jamaica; Yuko Morikawa for translating the Japanese documents.

My research was smoothed by talented programmers I have never met but who brought us Google, Google Maps, Google Scholar, ProQuest, and Kayak—al tools I used extensively in assembling this book. And in a nod to the old as wel as the new, the New York Public Library was an amazing resource and writing sanctuary that opened up the world of history not yet captured digital y. (The magnificent reading room is the photo on my Treo.) And thank you to Nina Subin and Chinatown Brasserie for helping with the perfect (and last-minute) author photo.

Writing a book while working ful -time would not have been possible without the patient understanding and support from others on the metro desk at the New York Times: Susan Edgerley and Joe Sexton, metro editors; Daryl Alexander for working out my scheduling snafus; Anahad O’Connor, Timothy Wil iams, and Manny Fernandez for wil ingly trading shifts with me so I could hunt for Chinese restaurants; my immediate editors, Pete Khoury, Denise Fuhs, Karin Roberts, and Ian Trontz, for understanding when my planes arrived late.

Many col eagues at the
New York Times
had early and continuous enthusiasm for the project, which kept me going: Sewel Chan, whom I have known and worked with since seventh grade; Amy Harmon; Cate Doty; Richard Oppel; Karen Arenson; David Chen; Edward Wong; Yilu Zhao; Verlyn Klinkenborg; Damien Cave; Nick Confessore; Eric Dash; Campbel Robertson; Rachel Swarns; Lynette Clemetson; Julie Bosman; Maureen Dowd; Nick Fox; Kathleen McElroy; Manny Fernandez; Andy Revkin; Eric Schmitt; Jil Abramson; Rick Berke; and many others.

Many readers of the proposal offered good insight: Jay Dixit, Chris Thorpe, Tim Wu, Chris Kirchoff, Eugene Lee, Zak Stone, Max Levchin, Charlie Savage, James Hong, Mike Epstein, Yiyun Li, Lulu Zhou, Josh Schanker, Mark Glassman, Charlotte Morgan, Alison Seanor, Alexis Ohanian, and Javier C. Hernandez. I must also thank Alexis Ohanian, Eugene Kuo, and Eugene Lee for doing creative graphics work.

On the writing front, Sugi Ganeshananthan gave me pep talks on caring about each and every sentence, while Verlyn Klinkenborg and Anne Hul both opened my eyes to the possibilities of prose.

My friends and roommates were supportive and patient when I disappeared for weeks and weekends, hunting for great Chinese restaurants and fortune cookies: Jay Dixit, Rachel Metz, Jessica Luterman, Robin Stein, Kathryn Shouyee Yung (who wil always be Shouyee to me), Braxton Robbason, Donald E. Lacey, David L. Hu, Anders Hove, Emily Vasquez, Maria Kim, Eric T. Lee, Bernard Chang, Pawel Swiatek, Paul Craig, Camberley Crick, Matthew Funk, Eli Pariser, Arianna Cha, Garrett Therolf, Brendan Kredel , Christian Bailey, and David Lat. I’d like to say thanks to Daniel J. Hemel for promising to start my fan club; Bobby Lee for reincarnating Hubba Bubba, my purple hippo, whom I thought had been lost forever when he was kidnapped in Cuzco; and Josh Yguado for the late-night cross-continental phone cal s that kept me from being lonely.

My siblings, Frances and Kenny, have had a lifetime of dealing with a big sister who wants to share the big bowl of noodles. To you both: this book is real y about us and our parents, to whom this book is dedicated.

There are three people whose presence I wil treasure throughout my lifetime. Adam S. Hickey and Matthew W. Granade have alternately believed in me and put up with me with biting humor. As we move through time and space, the strands of friendship and common experience wil stretch but continual y bind us together. Lastly, many thanks to CAT, whose devotion translated into both having the patience to take my panicked three A.M. phone cal s and the honesty to tel me when my writing sucked.

Notes

Prologue: March 30, 2005

The original interviews for this piece—with Chuck Strutt, Rebecca Paul, Derrick Wong, and James Currie—were conducted in May 2005 and were used soon thereafter in a short piece of mine cal ed “Who Needs Giacomo? Bet on the Fortune Cookie,” which ran in the
New York Times
on May 11, 2005, page A1. I again interviewed Rebecca Paul in Nashvil e, Tennessee, in March 2006 and Chuck Strutt and Sue Dooley in Des Moines, Iowa, in July 2006.

The statistic on the number of Chinese restaurants is provided by
Chinese Restaurant News,
an industry publication; as of 2007, there are more than 43,000. The number of McDonald’s, Burger Kings, and KFCs is derived from the counts from the corporations themselves.

The information about chop suey showing up in World War I cookbooks on page 10 is drawn from page 79 in Harvey Levenstein’s
Paradox of Plenty: A
Social History of Eating in Modern America
(University of California Press, 2003).

As of 2007, Wok n Rol Chinese restaurant, mentioned on page 9, is situated at 604 H Street NW, which is the location of the former Mary Surratt boardinghouse,

where

Abraham

Lincoln’s

assassination was planned.

The story about Jonas Salk and Chinese food on page 10 is from a letter to the editor, “Dr.

Salk’s Brain Food,” submitted by Yee Yuen Lee of Mount Lebanon to the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,
April 21, 2005.

The reference to the Freedom Riders eating at a Chinese restaurant on page 10 has been cited in numerous firsthand and contemporary accounts, and is available in “A Brief History of the Freedom Riders”

by David Lisker, written in 2001, available online at http://www.freedomridersfoundation.com/brief.history.html.

President Eisenhower’s relationship with Sun Chop Suey Restaurant on page 10 is documented in “Eisenhowers Keep Yen for Chop Suey,”
New York Times,
August 2, 1953, page 44.

The information about Peking Gourmet Inn’s bul etproof window on page 10 is from an interview conducted with the owners in February 2006.

The interview with Jim Ye took place in Arizona in November 2006. The interviews with the P.

F. Chang staff took place in October 2005. The interviews at Trey Yuen, in Louisiana, took place in November 2006. The interviews at the McCarricks’

home took place in Wyoming in July 2006, as wel as before and afterward on the telephone. The interviews at the Oriental Chow Mein factory took place in 2005.

The information about Misa Chang is drawn from interviews with Misa and Eric Ma in September 2005 and again in August 2006, as wel as earlier news articles. These included an excel ent extensive piece, “The Chinese Menu Guys,” by Jane H. Lii in the
New York Times,
July 28, 1996, section 13, page 1;

“Neighborhood Report: Upper West Side—Update; The Menu Wars, Continued” by Emily M. Berstein,
New York Times
, January 2, 1994, section 13, page 6; “Neighborhood Report: Upper West Side—

Update; Empire Szechuan Fined over Menus,”

unsigned
New York Times,
March 20, 1994, section 13, page 7; and “Chinese Food Places Vying on Delivery” by Fred Ferretti,
New York Times,
July 20, 1983, section C, page 3.

Chapter 3: A Cookie Wrapped in a Mystery
Inside an Enigma

The recounting of the 1983 San Francisco fortune cookie trial is drawn from interviews with Sal y Osaki in March 2006, documents provided by participants, and contemporaneous news accounts at the time. These news accounts include: “S.F., You’l Be Happy to Know, Is the Home of the Fortune Cookie” by Ken Wong,
San Francisco Examiner,
October 28, 1983, page B11; “The Judge Was One Smart Cookie in Handling This One” by Bob Lyhne,
Peninsula Times Tribune,
November 1, 1983; and

“Judge Settles S.F.-L.A. Clash—S.F. wins” by Sheri Tan,
Asian Week,
November 2, 1983.

Note that while some news accounts attribute the anecdote about the Japanese women’s outing to Chinatown to Sal y Osaki herself, it is actual y an account from Kathleen Fujita Date that was recounted by Sal y at the trial.

The explanation for how World War I soldiers passing through San Francisco played a role in the spread of the fortune cookie is drawn from accounts from fortune cookie manufacturers in a piece cal ed “Inside the Fortune Cookie” by Franz Gustafson, available in the San Francisco Public Library historical archives’ fortune cookie file. The name and date of the publication is unclear from the clip; however, judging from the content, it likely appeared in the mid-1970s. Other historical accounts about the rising popularity of the fortune cookie are drawn from the fol owing news sources: “Ah So! Sales Boom for Fortune Cookies: Messages Go Modern”

by Michael Winger,
Wall
Street Journal,
August 12, 1966, page A1; “Cookie’s Origin Leaves Asian-Americans

Bantering”

by

Ginny

McPartland,

Sacramento Bee,
final edition, January 24, 1990, Food 13 (Kathleen Fujita Date’s account of her mother sharing fortune cookies with a Chinese restaurant owner in Chinatown); “The Inside Story of the Fortune Cookie Craze” by Leslie Lieber,
Los
Angeles Times,
June 7, 1959, page I25 (which provides the late-1950s estimate of 250 mil ion fortune cookies produced annual y); “Psst! Filthy Fortune Cookies? Yup, They’re Sel ing Like Hotcakes” by Wil iam McAl ister,
Wall Street Journal,
March 3, 1972, page A1 (where the Transamerica protest anecdote is drawn from); “Rising Fortunes” by Armand Schwab Jr.,
New York Times,
November 27, 1960, page SM84 (on the use of fortune cookies at the 1960 Democratic convention); “Cookies and Song Enliven City Race” by Eric Pace,
New York
Times,
September 4, 1965, page 46 (regarding Abraham Beame in his 1965 mayoral race); “Daley Gets Cookies,”
Chicago Tribune,
March 25, 1972, page N15.