Become a Fortune Teller to the World!

Do you wait in anticipation for that delicious, crunchy, golden brown treat at the end of a Chinese meal? Do you believe that a 2 line message is going to change your world? Well, if yes, you aren’t the only one.

Most people love the nutty, butter flavoured fortune cookies offered at many Chinese restaurants across the world. And the messages inside them are sometimes taken very seriously. Personally, I am really disappointed if my Chinese meal does not end with a fortune cookie.

So where did these popular treats originate and who writes the millions of messages inside all of them?

There is a lot of debate over the invention of Fortune cookies. Almost everyone assumes the cookies originated in China but surprisingly, they are widely unknown there. Some say fortune cookies are an American invention while certain research also points to these cookies being of Japanese origin.

In Japan, these are called ‘fortune crackers.’ In Kyoto, one can see family-run bakeries that make these cookies by hand. In 1983, a mock court battle regarding the true inventor of fortune cookies was fought and won by a San Francisco family. Around the time of World War II, the cookies were regularly offered in Chinese restaurants in San Francisco. At that time, they were known as ‘fortune tea cakes’. These eventually spread to all Chinese restaurants across the country and later to other countries.

In fact, it was Chinese entrepreneurs who began manufacturing fortune cookies when bakeries producing the same were shut down during World War II. May be that is how fortune cookies got linked to the Chinese.

With millions of fortune cookies manufactured and consumed across the world every year, where each cookie has a fortune line buried in its shell, there has to be someone to write these fortunes.

Wonton Food, Inc., established in 1973 and based in New York City is the world’s largest manufacturer of fortune cookies and fortune cookie messages. Wonton Food ships between 4.5 million and 5 million cookies per day to restaurants throughout the U.S. and to Canada, Latin America, and Europe. For 30 years, Donald Lau, the chief financial officer at Wonton Foods has been the “Chief Fortune Writer”. Lau has been the sole hired fortune writer since the company acquired fortune cookie factories more than 30 years ago. Due to writer’s block and the company’s expansion, Lau now writes two or three fortunes a month. “I feel that I will never be able to write the great American novel, but I can write the fortunes,” he says. “I am the most read author in the United States.”

Wong believes the origins of fortune cookies are rooted in Chinese history, when Chinese patriots rebelling against the Ching dynasty passed messages hidden in pastries.

How can anyone keep up with the need for around 5 million fortunes per day? Hence, Wonton Food, Inc. pays a team of freelance writers to keep the messages new and fresh. Every couple of years, the contracted writers renew and refresh Wonton Foods’ database of 15,000 messages.

Yang’s Fortunes, Inc, founded in 1996 and based in San Francisco, handles printing, cutting, and packaging fortunes to send off to clients baking them into cookies. Yang’s churns out about 4 million fortunes per day some of which are written by Lisa Yang, vice president of Yang’s Fortunes and daughter of founder Steven Yang,

While it may seem easy to write one-line predictions, there is a lot more art to fortune-writing than meets the eye. They have to be general enough to make sense to any kind of customer, but at the same time, they can’t offend anyone. The fortunes must make sense to a student, a businessman, a nanny or kids, all at the same time.

The sheer number of fortunes needed is another obstacle. Companies keep databases of thousands of fortunes accumulated over the years, which they rotate on a regular basis to keep people from getting the same ones over and over. Coming up with original ideas is a real challenge.

The job also has more responsibility than just providing a smile after dinner. People take fortune cookies very seriously. Forums exist to discuss how to make the fortune inside come true. People collect the fortunes, tape them to their work desks and home fridges or tuck them into their wallets in the hope that the message written will materialize.

Writing fortunes that go inside the fortune cookies seems like an interesting and fun project as well as a good starting opportunity for any creative writer.

We can probably say that fortune cookies were invented by the Japanese, popularized by the Chinese, consumed by Americans and could well be written by you.