Tag Archives: chinatown

You’ve Been Wrong About Fortune Cookies Your Whole Life

Mother Jones

The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory in San Francisco isn’t much bigger than a narrow garage, but it produces thousands of fortune cookies each day. Large machines drip batter onto hot circular plates, hardening them in an instant. Two Chinese American women quickly grab the warm wafers, fold them over an iron, and insert a small piece of paper inside before fully closing the cookie. They move quickly under the gaze of tourists, who pay 50 cents to snap a photo.

The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory in San Francisco’s Chinatown Photo by Jenny Luna

There’s a decent chance the last fortune cookie you ate came from this factory: San Francisco and Los Angeles churn out most of the country’s supply. Aside from being big producers of the treat since the mid-20th century, these two cities also have a running feud about which city can claim to be the cookie’s original hometown. Jennifer Lee writes about this history in her book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles; you can hear her on a recent episode of our podcast Bite.

Thirty years ago, this battle came to a head when representatives for each city met in San Francisco’s Court of Historical Review to settle the dispute once and for all. (To be clear, this court was a mock court, the same that deliberated on whether martinis originated in San Francisco or the nearby city of Martinez, and whether Bay Area bagels are as good as New York’s.) After arguments for both sides were heard, the judge was presented with a fortune cookie. It read: “Judge who rules in favor of L.A. not a very smart cookie.”

After the laughter died down, a small Japanese woman named Sally Osaki approached the stand. She was carrying two long irons with clamps on the end—the original tools for making fortune cookies, she said.

And then Osaki said something that shocked everyone: “They’re not Chinese, they’re Japanese.” Later, Osaki recalled that the statement “just came out. I knew it in my soul.”

The irons she carried belonged to the owner of the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Osaki, who grew up in Japan, recognized that the fortune cookie concept originated with Japanese bakers, who would stick messages into tea cakes. Fortune cookies, she said, only became a Chinese tradition later—during her family’s, and her people’s, darkest times.

At the start of World War II, 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps on the West Coast. They had to leave everything behind: their homes, their businesses, their belongings—and, for those who were bakers, their iron tools for making tea cakes. It’s rumored that Japanese families passed these on to Chinese immigrants in their neighborhoods. And, well, the rest is history.

To hear more about Osaki’s story and the origin of fortune cookie, download our episode here. Also on that episode, don’t miss Tom Philpott’s interview with author Valerie Imbruce on how Chinatown markets have been sources of fresh produce since before the days of big supermarkets, and why they’ll continue to flourish.

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You’ve Been Wrong About Fortune Cookies Your Whole Life

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America’s Chinatowns Are Disappearing

Image: Dan Nguyen

When was the last time you took a trip to Chinatown? You might want to head there soon, because they might not be around for much longer. According to the Asian American Legal Defense and Education fund, Chinatowns all over the United States are being squeezed into smaller and smaller areas due to gentrification. At Wired‘s Map Labs blog, Greg Miller breaks down this break-down. Based on the maps, Boston has it the worst:

According to Census records, the percentage of the population that claims Asian heritage in Boston’s Chinatown dropped from 70 percent in 1990 to 46 percent in 2010. New York and Philadelphia’s Chinatowns did not see big change either way by that measure during the same time period, but in all three cities the proportion of homes inhabited by families and the proportion of children in the population dropped considerably. To Li that suggests that multigenerational immigrant homes are breaking up — or moving out.

To figure out the composition of these Chinatowns, volunteers went out and surveyed what types of restaurants, businesses and residential properties were in the area. Restaurants in particular are good barometers for a neighborhood’s service to immigrants. In other words, more Asian restaurants means a more robust Chinatown. But as the survey found, other restaurants and shops are moving in quickly.

The very existence of Chinatowns are a product of discrimination—immigrants created these communities to live in because they were excluded from pre-existing ones. And that tradition continues today, according to Bethany Li, author of the report. But with pressure from condominiums and high-end shops from all sides, many Chinatowns are slowly shrinking. While communities are fighting back, Li’s report says that without help they’ll be pushed out again:

Without the fights against unfettered development led by members from groups like the Chinese Progressive Association in Boston, Chinese Staff & Workers’ Association in New York, and Asian Americans United in Philadelphia, these Chinatowns would likely contain even more high-end and institutional expansion. City governments removed and replaced working-class immigrant residential and commercial land uses in each of these Chinatowns.

Bonnie Tsui at Atlantic Cities breaks down what some of those actions might be:

What’s to be done? Recommendations include allocating public land and funds for low-income housing development and retention at a more reasonable proportion to current high-end development; supporting small, local businesses to offset rising rents, given the symbiotic relationship with residents; prioritizing public green spaces; and engaging community organizations, residents, and the larger satellite communities to maintain Chinatowns as shared cultural history and home to working-class immigrants.

For many, Chinatowns are an attraction to a city, and many cities boast about their robust cultural neighborhoods. But they might not be around for much longer.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Many Chinatowns of North America
San Francisco’s Chinatown at night

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America’s Chinatowns Are Disappearing

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