The Fortune Cookie Chronicles (42 page)

There was a flood of newspaper accounts after the
Golden Venture
crash, but I drew some of the unique details of the boat journey itself from

“Chinese Immigrants Tel of Darwinian Voyage” by Diana Jean Schemo,
New York Times
, June 12, 1993, A1.

The citation on page 122 on how every single one of the thirty-seven smuggling boats had some connection to Taiwan is drawn from unpublished figures from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, cited by Marlowe Hood in

“Sourcing the Problem: Why Fuzhou?” in
Human
Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Trafficking and the
Challenge to America’s Migration Tradition
, edited by Paul J. Smith (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1997), page 78.

The account of the efforts to free the
Golden
Venture
passengers by Congressman Goodling, including his meeting with President Clinton, is drawn from Congressman Goodling’s account in “Goodling’s Efforts Led to Freedom for Chinese Refugees” by Julia

Duin,
Washington Times,
March 2, 1997.

Another article that proved useful in describing the
Golden Venture
detainees’ time in York was Julia Duin’s “Chinese Waste Away in U.S. Jails After Fleeing Population Control,”
Washington Times,
December 17, 1996.

The fact that the passengers ate General Tso’s chicken after their release, on page 134, is drawn from “Refugees’ Golden Day” by Ying Chang,
New York Daily News,
February 27, 1997.

Interviews were conducted at Fold-Pak’s Hazleton factory in April 2006.

Chapter 10: The Oldest Surviving Fortune
Cookies in the World?

Interviews with Merlin Lowe, Brian Kito, Stephen Tong, and Beverly Tong were conducted in Los Angeles in February 2007. Interviews with Gary Ono were conducted in January 2006. Information about the Umeya company in Los Angeles is drawn from Umeya’s Web site, www.umeyaricecake.com.

The reference to the divvying up of territory between Twixt and Umeya on page 144 is drawn from

“The Inside Story of the Fortune Cookie Craze” by Leslie Lieber,
Los Angeles Times,
June 7, 1959, page I25.

The Japanese paper is by Yasuko

Nakamachi: “Tools and Skil craft Work of the Japanese Cracker Makers in Fushimi,” published in
The Annual Report Systematization of Non-Written
Cultural Material for the Study of Human Societies
1

(2004): 221–28; the report was part of Kanagawa University’s

Twenty-First-Century

Center

of

Excel ence Program.

Chapter 11: The Mystery of the Missing Chinese
Deliveryman

Most of the reporting about the missing deliveryman was my firsthand observation done in April 2005. The police account of the 2002 Jian Lin-Chun murder is drawn from “Murdered for $25—

Teens Nailed in Deliveryman Slay” by Joe McGuck, Larry Celona, Philip Messing, and Aly Sujo,
New York
Post,
October 17, 2002, page 13. The murder of Jin-Sheng Liu was from “Teenager Who Lured Deliveryman to His Death Pleads Guilty” by Sarah Kershaw,
New York Times,
May 1, 2002, page B3.

The account of Huang Chen is drawn from “Teen Sentenced to 51 Years to Life in Kil ing of Food Deliveryman,” Associated Press, May 19, 2005.

Chapter 12: The Soy Sauce Trade Dispute
The interviews in this chapter were conducted with Natsuko Kumasawa in December 2006 outside Tokyo; Hiroshi Takamatsu of Kikkoman in December 2006 in Tokyo; and Masaaki Hirose and Kuniki Hatayama of Kikkoman in January 2007 in Walworth, Wisconsin.

For background information, I drew on documents filed with Codex, many of which are publicly available at www.codexalimentarius.net.

I also referred to news accounts from the time, including: “Feud Ferments Between Soy Sauce Makers” by Cindy Skrzycki,
Washington Post,
September 21, 2004, page E1; “What’s Soy Sauce Without the Soy? Japan Defends Asian Seasoning’s Tradition” by Kenji Hal , Associated Press, distributed September 25, 2004; “Global Food Fight? Why, Soytainly! Battle Brews over Sauce Labeling” by Kim Severson,
San Francisco Chronicle,
August 25, 2002, page A1; “Draft Codex Soy Sauce Standard Remains Controversial” by Stephen Clapp,
Food
Chemical News
46, no. 30 (September 6, 2004): 8; and “Draft Codex Soy Sauce Standard Remains in Limbo; Codex” by Stephen Clapp,
Food Chemical
News
46, no. 35 (October 11, 2004): 1.

Information on Kari-Out was drawn from interviews with the Epstein family and visits to the headquarters and the plant in 2005 and 2006, as wel as the article “Outrageous Fortune: Howard Epstein’s Love of Packaging Revolutionized Chinese Takeout”

by Paul Lukas,
Fortune Small Business,
October 4, 2001.

Interviews

at

ConAgra’s

La

Choy

headquarters were conducted in January 2007 in Napervil e, Il inois.

Chapter 13: Waizhou, U.S.A.

This chapter is essential y based on my firsthand experience, from the summer of 2002 to November 2004, spending time with the family in New York City and during numerous trips to Hiawassee, Georgia. A portion of the story ran under my byline as

“For Immigrant Family, No Easy Journeys,”
New York
Times,
January 4, 2003, page A1. I am thankful to Wendel Jamieson and the late Gerald Boyd for giving me the freedom and support to pursue that article.

The information about the proliferation of Chinese restaurants draws in large part on
Chinese
Restaurant News,
based in Fremont, California, and the generosity of its editor, Betty Xie. The anecdote about King Ying Low in Des Moines comes from
Los
Angeles Times,
April 15, 1924, page 9.

Chapter 14: The Greatest Chinese Restaurant in
the World

The information about Chinese food in Antartica is drawn from an e-mail exchange with the executive chef at McMurdo Station. The fact that NASA serves Chinese food in space in drawn from NASA’s own Web site, which lists menus for its astronauts.

The visits and interviews for this chapter were conducted in the fol owing order: Peru in August 2006; Canada in September 2006; Japan, South Korea, and Singapore in December 2006; Los Angeles and San Francisco in February 2007; Britain, France, and Italy in February 2007; Brazil in March 2007; India, Mauritius, and Dubai in May 2007; Jamaica in June 2007; and Australia in July 2007.

The interviews with Ming Tsai were conducted in March and June 2006.

Chapter 16:
Tsujiura Senbei

The information on fortune cookies in Japan is drawn from work by Yasuko Nakamachi. The main paper, written in Japanese, is titled “Tools and Skil craft Work of the Japanese Cracker Makers in Fushimi,”

published

in
The Annual

Report

Systematization of Non-Written Cultural Material for
the Study of Human Societies
1 (2004): 221–28; the report was part of Kanagawa University’s Twenty-First-Century Center of Excel ence Program.

Chapter 17: Open-Source Chinese Restaurants
The insight to create a separate chapter for this stems from conversations with Jimmy Quach and Tim Wu.

The information about Chicken McNuggets on page 270 comes from
McDonald’s: Behind the
Arches
(New York: Bantam, 1995) by John F. Love, page 399.

Chapter 18: So What Did Confucius Really Say?

Some of the original inspiration for this chapter came from a hilarious long article by Terry McDermott: “The Sage of Fortune Cookies: A Quest to Discover Why the Ubiquitous Little Messages So Rarely Predict the Future Anymore Leads Through a Byzantine World of Secrecy and Suspicion to an Unlikely Oracle,”
Los Angeles Times,
November 4, 2000, page A1.

The interviews with Mike Moskowitz were conducted in April 2006 and in January 2007 in Fort Lauderdale. The interview with Marcus Young was conducted in February 2006 in Minneapolis. The interviews and visits with Wonton Food were conducted over 2005 and 2007. The interviews with David Lee were conducted in November 2005, and with his father, Yong Lee, several months earlier, and those with Steven and Lisa Yang were conducted in November 2005 and February 2007. The visit to the Hyotanyama Inari shrine near Osaka took place in December 2006.

The information about Twixt, now part of Wonton Food, inviting the National Association of Gagwriters to submit cookie sayings on page 290 is drawn from “The Inside Story of the Fortune Cookie Craze” by Leslie Lieber,
Los Angeles Times,
June 7, 1959, page I25. The account about the salesman Faustino Corona working as a fortune cookie writer is drawn from “Postscript: Fortune Cookie Business Using the Old Noodle” by Bart Everett,
Los Angeles
Times,
March 21, 1977, page OCI.

Bibliography

In addition to the specific works listed in the notes, the fol owing sources—some of which are also cited in the

notes—proved

useful

in

shaping

my

understanding of the Chinese experience and Chinese food in America and around the world.

Anderson, Eugene N.
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New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

Arkush, R. David, and Leo O. Lee, eds.
Land Without Ghosts:
Chinese Impressions of America from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present.
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As a Chinaman Saw Us: Passages from His Letters to a
Friend at Home.
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Barbas, Samantha. “I’l Take Chop Suey: Restaurants as Agents of Culinary and Cultural Change.”
Journal of
Popular Culture
36, no. 4 (Spring 2003): 669–87.

Bates, J. H.
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Biao X. “Emigration from China: A Sending Country Perspective.”
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41, no. 3

(September 2003): 21–48.

Bonner, Arthur.
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Chang, Isabel e Chin.
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Chang, K. C., ed.
Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological
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Chao, Tonia. “Communicating Through Architecture: San Francisco

Chinese

Restaurants

as

Cultural

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Chen,

Chin-Yu.

“San

Francisco’s

Chinatown:

A

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PhD diss., University of Idaho, 1992.

Chen, Yong. “A Journey to the West: Chinese Food in Western Countries.”
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Culture
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Cheng, F. C.
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Tiptree, Essex, England: Anchor Press, Ltd., 1955.

Cheng, Te Chao David. “Acculturation of the Chinese in the United States.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1948.

Chin, Ko-Lin.
Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration
to the United States.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.

Chinn, Thomas W.
Bridging the Pacific: San Francisco
Chinatown and Its People.
San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1989.

Cho, Lily. “On Eating Chinese: Chinese Restaurants and the Politics of Disapora.” PhD diss., University of Alberta, Canada, 2003.

Chop Suey Cook Book (containing authentic translations of
the best recipes of leading Chinese chefs and
directions for preparing various popular and
healthful Chinese dishes exactly as they are
prepared in the Orient).
Chicago: Pacific Trading Co., 1928.

Chu, Louis. “The Chinese Restaurants in New York City.”

Master’s thesis, New York University, 1939.

Chung, Lu Tzu. “Ethnic Enterprise in the Kansas City Metropolitan

Area:

The

Chinese

Restaurant

Business, Volumes I and I (Missouri).” PhD diss., University of Kansas, 1990.

Condit, Ira.
The Chinaman as We See Him.
Chicago: Missionary Campaign Library, 1900.

Conlin, Joseph R.
Bacon, Beans and Galatines: Food and
Foodways on the Western Mining Frontier.
Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1986.

Davis, Netta. “To Serve the ‘Other’: Chinese-American Immigrants in the Restaurant Business.”
Journal for
the Study of Food and Society
6, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 70–81.

The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas.
Edited by Lynn Pan. Singapore: Archipelago Press–Landmark Books, 1998.