You Will Read Funny Stories The unusual history of fortune cookies BY MOLLY TEMPLETON THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, nonfiction by Jennifer 8. Lee. Twelve, 2008. Hardcover, $24.99 At first, it's a strange beginning, at least to someone who hasn't been eating a lot of Chinese food lately. What does a 2005 Powerball fluke — a set of numbers that resulted in more than 100 winners — have to do with Chinese food, the subject of Jennifer 8. Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles? Within a few pages, it all becomes clear, and probably anyone who loves fortune cookies has already figured it out: The winning numbers came from a fortune. And so, eventually, did this book; the Powerball incident sent Lee on something of a quest, a trip all over the country and eventually the world in search of the origins of fortune cookies. But that search is only the beginning. Lee draws out the story of fortune cookies and their murky origins, rife with challenge and mystery, and layers into her engrossing, charmingly tangential book other pieces of the history of Chinese food in America. From the vanilla-flavored folded wafers, Lee zigs over to the story of the "menu wars" that began when Misa Chang hit upon the idea of fast, free delivery in 1970s Manhattan; another zag takes her to a small town in Georgia, where an immigrant family falls apart under the stress of living and owning a restaurant in such a foreign place. But first, she explores the terrible route many Chinese immigrants take to the U.S. and the dangers some of them face as delivery workers for city restaurants. Lee tells story after story in fast, personal prose, narrating her journey through the history of Chinese food in America and, from time to time, around the world. In a quest to find the greatest Chinese food on Earth outside of China, she treks internationally, visiting other countries where Chinese immigrants have influenced popular cuisine, but she returns, for most tales, to the U.S., to New York's Chinatown and to the small, family-owned restaurants that dot the country. Each chapter is a story that reads like a magazine article: a piece on "Why Chow Mein is the Chosen Food of the Chosen People — or, the Kosher Duck Scandal of 1989," which thoughtfully explores the relationship Jews have to Chinese food, in particular stands alone. But it also ties in with Lee's ongoing journey, which naturally isn't just about Chinese food, or about whether fortune cookies are really Japanese or Chinese in origin. It's about immigration and identity and the way a nation's culture — in this case in the form of its food — can change and be changed by the places where it exists. Lee is, as she explains in her first chapter, American-born Chinese, and it's clear in her careful, caring explorations of the lives of those who make Chinese food in America and those who regularly consume it that she connects with both groups, with the tired daughter who doesn't want to work in her parents' kitchen and with the truck driver who appreciates being able to get similar food wherever he goes. What might be most delightful in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles is the way Lee simultaneously combines Chinese and American history, geography, culture and society, weaving from one to the other with disarming skill and a talent for explaining colorfully (through copious research) or simply, quietly illustrating the places where American and Chinese culture have, over the years, affected each other. She explores small-town Chinese restaurants and China's Fujian province, from which many of the U.S.'s Chinese restaurant workers come; she describes how the Chinese Exclusion Act contributed to the emergence of Chinese laundries and restaurants and how those restaurants shifted from more authentic Chinese cuisine to something that would appeal to American diners; she finds the relationship between America's Japanese internment camps and the rise of the fortune cookie in Chinese restaurants. The fortune cookie, for Lee, is a focal point, one touched by countless stories and lives on its way to your take-out bag. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles is likely to make you hungry for ma po tofu or General Tso's chicken (as not-Chinese as the latter may be); read it over dinner and you'll likely find yourself considering your take-out boxes and soy sauce packets from a changed — and enjoyably informed — perspective.     PARADISE CITY CAFE | KEKAU CHOCOLATES | LESSER KNOWN FOOD CARTS | THE DEVINE CUPCAKE KOBE BURGERS | THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES | BRENDAN MAHANEY | CHOW SHORTS | WORD IS …