Who Invented the Fortune Cookie?

It is impossible to go to a Chinese restaurant in North America without being offered a fortune cookie at the end of the meal.  These fortune cookies have become almost synonymous with Chinese restaurants – but according to The Book of General Ignorance, there is nothing traditionally Chinese about these cookies – in fact they were first developed by a Japanese restaurant owner in the United States.

According to the authors,  the inventor of the Fortune Cookie was Makato Hagiwara, who started the tradition in San Francisico. Soon the restaurants of China Town copied the idea and made it their own.  So much so that no one today associated fortune cookies with Japanese cuisine.

In Wikipedia it is claimed, however, that the fortune cookie might have a Chinese origin after all. According to the Wikipedia article, fortune cookies were first used in China during the Mongol occupation, by revolutionaries sending secret messages to their fellow conspirators by hiding little hand written notes in cookies.

Unfortunately, many of discoveries were lost or failed to be perfected mainly due to China experiencing the equivalent of a dark age when it was overrun and occupied by barbarians from the North.

Considering that the Chinese had developed a hot air balloon toy that was an exact though miniature equivalent of the first manned balloon flown in France centuries later,  one can only wonder what the world would have been like if ancient Chinese civilization had been allowed to develop and take advantage of its initial head start.

Below is a partial list of Chinese “firsts” – technologies and devices which were actually invented or discovered in ancient China:

• the Abacus – the abacus was an ancient counting and addition/subtraction device – the forerunner of the modern calculator.
• the calendar
• the wheel barrow
• paper
• kites – in ancient China kites were used both as a toy and for more military purposes. Large kites were used to hoist human observers aloft to observe the enemy positions. Similar kites were used by European armies at the beginning of World War 1.
• relief maps
• halter (for horses and beasts of burden)
• bells
• fireworks
• an early form of the compass
• self igniting matches
• hot air balloons
• parachutes
• the fishing reel
• negative numbers – an amazing mathematical achievement allowing for complex mathematics and physics
• the umbrella
• gunpowder
• mechanical clocks
• flushing toilets
• magic mirrors
• brackets — which allowed for more complex engineering and construction
• silk
• porcelain (hence china)
• an early version of the printing press
• the suspension bridge

As well as many more ….