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Solving a Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside a Cookie
By JENNIFER 8. LEEJune 29, 2016
美食JENNIFER 8. LEE 2016年6月29日
Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
Some 3 billion fortune cookies are made each year, almost all in the United
States. But the crisp cookies wrapped around enigmatic sayings have spread
around the world. They are served in Chinese restaurants in Britain, Mexico,
Italy, France and elsewhere. In India, they taste more like butter cookies.
A surprisingly high number of winning tickets in Brazil's national lottery
in 2004 were traced to lucky numbers from fortune cookies distributed by a
Chinese restaurant chain called Chinatown.
全世界每年要生产大约30亿个幸运饼干，几乎全部是在美国生产的。但这些包裹着高深
莫测的格言的酥脆饼干扩散到了全球。它们的身影出现在了英国、墨西哥、意大利、法
国和其他地方的中餐馆里。在印度，它们吃起来更像黄油饼干。2004年，巴西国家彩票
的中奖数字中，相当一部分来自中餐馆连锁品牌唐人街(Chinatown)分销的幸运饼干中
的幸运数字，比例高得惊人。
But there is one place where fortune cookies are conspicuously absent: China.
但有一个地方明显没有幸运饼干的身影：中国。
Now a researcher in Japan believes she can explain the disconnect, which has
long perplexed American tourists in China. Fortune cookies, Yasuko
Nakamachi says, are almost certainly originally from Japan.
中国没有幸运饼干这一点长期困扰着去中国旅游的美国游客。如今，日本的一名研究人
员认为她能够解释这个现象。名叫中町泰子(Yasuko Nakamachi)的这位研究人员称，幸
运饼干几乎肯定发源于日本。
Her prime pieces of evidence are the generations-old small family bakeries
making obscure fortune cookie-shaped crackers by hand near a temple outside
Kyoto. She has also turned up many references to the cookies in Japanese
literature and history, including an 1878 image of a man making them in a
bakery - decades before the first reports of American fortune cookies.
她的首要证据，是京都郊区一座寺庙附近的小型家庭式烘焙屋。那些地方世代传承，它
们用手工制作的爆脆饼干形状与幸运饼干类似，但却鲜为人知。她还指出了日本文学和
历史中多处提到这些饼干的地方，其中包括1878年的一幅画，画中一名男子正在一家烘
焙屋里做这种饼干。那幅画比首次出现有关美国幸运饼干的报道早了数十年。
The idea that fortune cookies come from Japan is counterintuitive, to say
the least. "I am surprised," said Derrick Wong, the vice president of the
largest fortune cookie manufacturer in the world, Wonton Food, based in
Brooklyn. “People see it and think of it as a Chinese food dessert, not a
Japanese food dessert,” he said. But, he conceded, “The weakest part of
the Chinese menu is dessert.”
认为幸运饼干发源于日本的观点，至少是和直觉不符的。“我很吃惊，”布鲁克林的全
球最大幸运饼干生产商云吞食品公司(Wonton Food)副总裁德里克·黄(Derrick Wong)
说。“人们看到它，就会认为它是中餐里的甜点，”他说。不过他承认，“中餐最薄弱
的地方就是甜点。”
Ms. Nakamachi, a folklore and history graduate student at Kanagawa
University outside Tokyo, has spent more than six years trying to establish
the Japanese origin of the fortune cookie, much of that at National Diet
Library (the Japanese equivalent of the Library of Congress). She has sifted
through thousands of old documents and drawings. She has also traveled to
temples and shrines across the country, conducting interviews to piece
together the history of fortune-telling within Japanese desserts.
中町泰子是东京郊区神奈川大学(Kanagawa University)历史民俗资料学研究生。她用
了六年多时间，试图明确日本是幸运饼干的发源地，其中大量工作是在国立国会图书馆
(National Diet Library)里进行的。她仔细查阅了成千上万份古老的文件和图画，还
前往日本各地的寺庙和神社进行采访，对日式甜点用于占卜的历史进行了梳理。
Ms. Nakamachi, who has long had an interest in the history of sweets and
snacks, saw her first fortune cookie in the 1980s in a New York City Chinese
restaurant. At that time she was merely impressed with Chinese ingenuity,
finding the cookies an amusing and clever idea.
中町泰子长期对甜点和小吃的历史感兴趣。上世纪80年代，她在纽约市的一家中餐馆里
第一次见到幸运饼干。当时，她只是被中国人的心灵手巧所打动，认为那些饼干是一个
有趣、聪明的主意。
It was only in the late 1990s, outside Kyoto near one of the most popular
Shinto shrines in Japan, that she saw that familiar shape at a family bakery
called Sohonke Hogyokudo.
直到90年代末，在京都郊区一座日本香火最旺的神社附近，她才在一家叫宝玉堂(
Hogyokudo)的家族经营烘焙屋里再次看到那种熟悉的形状。
National Diet Library
“These were exactly like fortune cookies,” she said. “They were shaped
exactly the same and there were fortunes.”
“它们和幸运饼干完全一样，”她说。“形状完全一样，也有幸运纸条。”
The cookies were made by hand by a young man who held black grills over a
flame. The grills contain round molds into which batter is poured, something
like a small waffle iron. Little pieces of paper were folded into the
cookies while they were still warm. With that sighting, Ms. Nakamachi’s
long research mission began.
那些饼干是一名年轻男子手工制作的。他把黑色的烤架置于火上。架上放着圆形的模具
，就像小型的华夫饼模具一样，里面倒入面糊。在饼干尚处于温热状态时，把小纸片折
起来放进饼干里。看到这一幕后，中町泰子开始了她漫长的研究。
A visit to the Hogyokudo shop revealed that the Japanese fortune cookies Ms.
Nakamachi found there and at a handful of nearby bakers differ in some ways
from the ones that Americans receive at the end of a meal with the check
and a handful of orange wedges. They are bigger and browner, as their batter
contains sesame and miso rather than vanilla and butter. The fortunes are
not stuffed inside, but are pinched in the cookie’s fold. (Think of the
cookie as a Pac-Man: the paper is tucked into Pac-Man’s mouth rather than
inside his body.) Still, the family resemblance is undeniable.
中町泰子在宝玉堂及附近一些烘焙屋发现的日本幸运饼干和美国人在餐后随账单及几片
橙子一起呈上来的幸运饼干有所不同。日本的幸运饼干更大，颜色是更深的棕色，馅料
中含有芝麻和味噌，而不是香草和黄油。幸运签语不是塞在里面的，而是被捏在褶缝里
的（如果把饼干想像成吃豆人，幸运纸条就是叼在吃豆人嘴巴里的，而不是塞在它肚子
里）。但是它们的血缘关系无可否认。
“People don’t realize this is the real thing because American fortune
cookies are popular right now,” said Takeshi Matsuhisa as he deftly folded
the hot wafers into the familiar curved shape.
“美国幸运饼干太流行了，所以人们已经不认识真货了，” 松久刚(Takeshi
Matsuhisa)一边说，一边娴熟地把热腾腾的饼叠成我们熟悉的弯曲形状。
His family has owned the bakery for three generations, although the local
tradition of making the cookies predates their store. Decades ago, many
confectioneries and candies came with little fortunes inside, Mr. Matsuhisa
said.
这家烘焙屋已经在他家传了三代人，不过当地制作幸运饼干的传统还要早于他家的店铺
。几十年前，很多甜食和糖果里都开始放入幸运签语，松久刚先生说。
“Then, the companies realized it wasn’t such a good idea to put pieces of
paper in candy, so then they all disappeared,” he added. The fear that
people would accidentally eat the fortune is one reason his family now puts
the paper outside the cookie.
“后来，许多公司意识到，在糖果里放签语不是好主意，于是它们都关门了，”他补充
说。他家之所以把签语放在饼干外面，担心人们不小心把签语吃下去是原因之一。
The bakery has used the same 23 fortunes for decades. (In contrast, Wonton
Food has a database of well over 10,000 fortunes.) Hogyokudo’s fortunes are
more poetic than prophetic, although some nearby bakeries use newer
fortunes that give advice or make predictions. One from Inariya, a shop
across from the Shinto shrine, contains the advice, “To ward off lower back
pain or joint problems, undertake some at-home measures like yoga.”
几十年来，这家烘焙屋一直使用同样的23种签语（相反，Wonton Food食品公司有一个
数据库，里面有一万多种签语）。宝玉堂的幸运签语更像诗歌，而不是预言，尽管附近
有些烘焙屋使用更新的签语，向顾客给出建议或做出预言。在正对着神社的稻荷屋(
Inariya)店内，一张签语上写着这样的建议：“为防止腰背疼痛和关节问题，在家里做
些瑜伽之类锻炼。”
As she researched the cookie’s Japanese origins, among the most persuasive
pieces of evidence Ms. Nakamachi found was an illustration from a 19th-
century book of stories, “Moshiogusa Kinsei Kidan.”
中町泰子在研究幸运饼干源自日本的过程中发现，在众多颇有说服力的证据之中，一幅
来自19世纪的故事书《藻汐草近世奇谈》(Moshiogusa Kinsei Kidan)里的插图格外重
要。
Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
饼干侦探 日本的研究生中町泰子认为，幸运饼干在一个世纪前或更早的时候发源于京
都附近。
A character in one of the tales is an apprentice in a senbei store. In Japan
, the cookies are called, variously, tsujiura senbei (“fortune crackers”),
omikuji senbei (“written fortune crackers”), and suzu senbei (“bell
crackers”).
在其中一个故事里，有个人物在煎饼店做学徒——在日本，幸运饼干也叫做“辻占煎饼
”(tsujiura senbei)、“御签煎饼”(omikuji senbei )或“铃铛煎饼”(bell
crackers)。
The apprentice appears to be grilling wafers in black irons over coals, the
same way they are made in Hogyokudo and other present-day bakeries. A sign
above him reads “tsujiura senbei” and next to him are tubs filled with
little round shapes — the tsujiura senbei themselves.
图中，这个学徒显然在用黑色的烤架在煤火上烤煎饼，如今，宝玉堂和不少烘焙屋依旧
是这样做煎饼的。图中写着“辻占煎饼”字样，他旁边有很多盆子，装满了圆圆的东西
——正是大堆的辻占煎饼。
The book, story and illustration are all dated 1878. The families of
Japanese or Chinese immigrants in California that claim to have invented or
popularized fortune cookies all date the cookie’s appearance between 1907
and 1914.
这本书、这个故事和这幅插图都来自1878年。无论是声称自己发明或推广了幸运饼干的
日本家族或中国到加利福尼亚的移民，都说这种饼干是在1907年到1914年出现的。
The illustration was the kind of needle in a haystack discovery academics
yearn for. “It’s very rare to see artwork of a thing being made,” Ms.
Nakamachi said. “You just don’t see that.”
这幅图如同大海捞针，是学术界非常渴望的发现。“关于物品制作过程的艺术品非常罕
见，”中町泰子说。“根本就看不到这样的东西。”
She found other historical traces of the cookies as well. In a work of
fiction by Tamenaga Shunsui, who lived between 1790 and 1843, a woman tries
to placate two other women with tsujiura senbei that contain fortunes.
她还发现了幸运饼干的其他历史踪迹，为永春水(Tamenaga Shunsui)是一位生活在1790
年到1843年的小说家，在他的一篇小说中，有一个女子试图用带有幸运签语的辻占煎饼
来安抚另外两个女人。
Ms. Nakamachi’s work, originally published in 2004 as part of a Kanagawa
University report, has been picked up by some publications in Japan. A few
customers have bought senbei from Hogyokudo, the Matsuhisa family said. But
otherwise, the paper has drawn limited attention, perhaps because fortune
cookies are not well known in Japan.
中町泰子的作品最初于2004年发表在神奈川大学(Kanagawa University)的一份学报上
，后来又被日本的一些媒体转载。総本家族说，确实有些顾客开始来宝玉堂买煎饼了。
但是这份论文获得的关注相当有限，或许是因为幸运饼干在日本没那么有名。
If fortune cookies are Japanese in origin, how did they become a mainstay of
American Chinese restaurants? To understand this, Ms. Nakamachi has made
two trips to the United States, focusing on San Francisco and Los Angeles,
where she interviewed the descendants of Japanese and Chinese immigrant
families who made fortune cookies.
如果幸运饼干的确起源于日本，那么它又是怎么成了美国中餐馆的保留项目呢？为了弄
清楚这一点，中町泰子两次访问美国，主要是在旧金山和洛杉矶，她采访了不少制作幸
运饼干的日本和中国家族的后裔。
The cookie’s path is relatively easy to trace back to World War II. At that
time they were a regional specialty, served in California Chinese
restaurants, where they were known as “fortune tea cakes.” There,
according to later interviews with fortune cookie makers, they were
encountered by military personnel on the way back from the Pacific Theater.
When these veterans returned home, they would ask their local Chinese
restaurants why they didn’t serve fortune cookies as the San Francisco
restaurants did.
幸运饼干之路可以轻松追溯到“二战”期间。当时它们是一种地区特产，专在加利福尼
亚的中餐馆里出售，名叫“幸运茶点”。根据后来对幸运饼干的生产者的采访，当时从
太平洋剧院(Pacific Theater)回来的军人偶然遇到了这些点心。这些老兵们回到老家
后，就问家乡的中国餐馆有没有旧金山中餐馆的这种幸运饼干。
Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
酥脆工艺 宝玉堂利用一个木质模具手工制作幸运饼干。
The cookies rapidly spread across the country. By the late 1950s, an
estimated 250 million fortune cookies were being produced each year by
dozens of small Chinese bakeries and fortune cookie companies. One of the
larger outfits was Lotus Fortune in San Francisco, whose founder, Edward
Louie, invented an automatic fortune cookie machine. By 1960, fortune
cookies had become such a mainstay of American culture that they were used
in two presidential campaigns: Adlai Stevenson’s and Stuart Symington’s.
这种饼干迅速蔓延到全国。到20世纪50年代末期，全国几十家小型中国糕点和幸运饼干
生产公司大约每年生产2.5亿个幸运饼干。其中一家较大的是旧金山的莲花幸运饼干厂(
Lotus Fortune)，它的创始人爱德华·路易(Edward Louie)发明了幸运饼干自动生产机
。到1960年，幸运饼干已经是美国文化的保留节目，在阿德莱·史蒂文森(Adlai
Stevenson)和斯图尔特·塞明顿(Stuart Symington)的总统竞选活动中都曾登场。
But prior to World War II, the history is murky. A number of immigrant
families in California, mostly Japanese, have laid claim to introducing or
popularizing the fortune cookie. Among them are the descendants of Makoto
Hagiwara, a Japanese immigrant who oversaw the Japanese Tea Garden built in
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in the 1890s. Visitors to the garden were
served fortune cookies made by a San Francisco bakery, Benkyodo.
但幸运饼干在“二战”之前的历史是模糊的。若干加利福尼亚移民家庭，主要是日本人
，声称是他们发明或推广了幸运饼干，其中就包括萩原真(Makoto Hagiwara)的后裔。
日本移民萩原真于19世纪90年代在旧金山金门公园内负责建造了日本茶园(Japanese
Tea Garden)，这座茶园的宾客会得到由旧金山的烘焙屋勉强堂(Benkyodo)制作的幸运
饼干。
A few Los Angeles-based businesses also made fortune cookies in the same era
century, except during World War II; Umeya, one of the earliest mass-
producers of fortune cookies in Southern California, and the Hong Kong
Noodle company, a Chinese-owned business. Fugetsudo and Benkyodo both have
discovered their original “kata” black iron grills, almost identical to
the ones that are used today in the Kyoto bakery.
这段时期还有不少旧金山的生意人也在制作幸运饼干，比如风月堂(Fugetsudo)，这是
一家家族烘焙屋，在日本城(Japantown)已经开了一个多世纪，仅在“二战”期间暂时
关张；还有梅屋(Umeya)，这是南加州最早大批生产幸运饼干的公司之一；还有华人企
业香港面条公司(Hong Kong Noodle)。风月堂和勉强堂都发现了他们最早的“kata”黑
铁烤架，几乎和如今京都烘焙屋内使用的烤架一模一样。
“Maybe the packaging of fortune cookie must say ‘Japanese fortune cookie
— made in Japan,’ ” said Gary Ono, whose grandfather founded Benkyodo.
“或许幸运饼干的包装应该写上‘日本幸运饼干——日本制造’，”勉强堂创始人的孙
子加里·小野(Gary Ono)说。
Ms. Nakamachi is still unsure how exactly fortune cookies made the jump to
Chinese restaurants. But during the 1920s and 1930s, many Japanese
immigrants in California owned chop suey restaurants, which served
Americanized Chinese cuisine. The Umeya bakery distributed fortune cookies
to well over 100 such restaurants in southern and central California.
中町泰子仍然不能确定幸运饼干是怎么跑到中餐馆去的。但是在20世纪二三十年代，加
州的很多日本移民都在开中式杂碎餐馆，提供美式中餐。梅屋向加利福尼亚南部和中部
的100多家类似餐馆供应幸运饼干。
“At one point the Japanese must have said, fish head and rice and pickles
must not go over well with the American population,” said Mr. Ono, who has
made a campaign of documenting the history of the fortune cookie through
interviews with his relatives and by publicizing the discovery of the kata
grills.
“这些日本人在某个时候一定说过，鱼头、米饭和泡菜是不可能在美国那么受欢迎的，
”小野先生说，他发起了一场记录幸运饼干历史的活动，采访自己的亲戚，并且宣传
kata烤架这一发现。
Early on, Chinese-owned restaurants discovered the cookies, too. Ms.
Nakamachi speculates that Chinese-owned manufacturers began to take over
fortune cookie production during World War II, when Japanese bakeries all
over the West Coast closed as Japanese-Americans were rounded up and sent to
internment camps.
华人餐馆也在早期发现了这种饼干，中町泰子女士推断，华人制造商是在“二战”期间
开始接手幸运饼干的生产，当时西海岸的日裔美国人都被送入拘留营，日本人的烘焙屋
也都关门了。
Mr. Wong pointed out: “The Japanese may have invented the fortune cookie.
But the Chinese people really explored the potential of the fortune cookie.
It’s Chinese-American culture. It only happens here, not in China.”
黄先生指出：“日本人可能发明了幸运饼干，但确实是中国人开发了它的潜能。它是华
裔美国文化。这种文化只有美国才有，中国是没有的。”
That sentiment is echoed among some descendants of the Japanese immigrants
who played an early role in fortune cookies. “If the family had decided to
sell fortune cookies, they would have never done it as successfully as the
Chinese have,” said Douglas Dawkins, the great-great-grandson of Makoto
Hagiwara. “I think it’s great. I really don’t think the fortune cookie
would have taken off if it hadn’t been popularized in such a wide venue.”
不少在幸运饼干初创之际扮演重要角色的日本移民的后裔，都认同这种说法。“如果我
们的家族当初决定卖幸运饼干，也不会像中国人那样成功，”萩原真的玄外孙道格拉斯
·道金斯(Douglas Dawkins)说。“我觉得这很好。我觉得幸运饼干如果不是在中餐馆
这样广泛的场所流行起来，也不会像现在这样火爆。”
Copyright © 2016 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.
Jennifer 8. Lee的《幸运饼干编年史》在2008年3月出版。
翻译：陈亦亭、晋其角 |
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