Fortune cookies
In the late 19th to early 20th century, Japanese bakeries made a cookie called tsujiura senbei — a larger, darker, sesame-flavoured cracker than usual with a paper fortune tucked into the bend. These were sold at temples and street vendors, especially around Kyoto.
Japanese immigrants brought the cookie to California in the early 1900s. The modern vanilla-flavoured, folded style we know today emerged in Los Angeles and San Francisco, with different bakeries claiming credit. After WWII, Chinese restaurants began serving them, partly because Japanese-American businesses were disrupted by internment. Chinese restaurateurs adopted the cookie, and over time it became associated almost entirely with “Chinese food” in the West.
In China itself, fortune cookies were basically unknown until they appeared in tourist areas in the 1990s. Many Chinese people consider them a Western novelty.
Many Western Chinese restaurants serve a fortune cookie with the bill.
You can get a cookie here. It may be serious or humourous.
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