The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
by Jennifer 8 Lee
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jennifer 8 LeeEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-03-03
ISBN: 0446580074
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Twelve
Book Reviews of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
Book Review: A Peek into the Hidden World Behind Chinese Restaurant Dining Rooms
Summary: 4 Stars
Jennifer Lee answers many mysteries in this book that may have interested you. (Where do all those Chinese people come from who work in the restaurants? How did fortune cookies get started? Who writes the fortunes? What is the real origin of Chop Suey?) For those answers, it's worth reading the book.
Her lens is a most unusual one: She visits Chinese restaurants where lottery winners got fortunes that gave them the numbers they used to win an unprecedented number of second prizes.
What she learns is that Chinese food as prepared and eaten in the United States says more about Americans than it does about the Chinese. She also shows how self-organizing principles (from complexity theory) apply to explain why Chinese restaurants are so similar.
Ultimately, this book describes what it means to be human and to want a better life. In that sense, it's very life affirming.
I found that the book had two major drawbacks. First, Ms. Lee chooses to tell you the story of how she tracked down her answers rather than cutting through the preliminaries. I found much of her research reporting to be less interesting than the punch lines when finally reached.
Second, I wondered how competent she was in doing this research. She seemed to rely a lot on interviewing people face to face. Surely, a lot of answers could have been gotten in other ways. Where I became most skeptical was in her section on picking the best Chinese restaurant in the world. One of her criteria was that lots of Chinese people eat there. I have Chinese-American friends who take me to many superb, attractive (as opposed to "hole in the wall") Chinese restaurants where my wife and I are the only non-Chinese Americans in the place. None of these restaurants were mentioned by Ms. Lee. She didn't even visit the cities where our favorite Chinese restaurants are such as Honolulu.
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