Jennifer 8 Lee Goes “On the Road”

by Patricia Lamkin
Special to Asia
Photo courtesy of Jennifer 8 Lee

“There are actually more Chinese restaurants in this country, than McDonalds, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Wendy’s combined,” said Jennifer 8 Lee at a recent presentation in Pasadena.

With that opening statement and the aid of a projector, Lee shared her amusing pictorial journey across six continents, uncovering culinary secrets great and small. The result of her 18 months of travels and research: The Fortune Cookie Chronicles (Twelve Books).  In it she argues that Chinese food might be more American than apple pie.

The New York Times reporter, dubbed “conceptual scoop artist" by NPR, held up her digital camera to add the Vroman's bookstore gathering to her blog.  Yes, now we are part of her story.  Having covered such heavy topics as crime, politics, poverty, and the environment, Lee takes on her latest– Chinese food - with as much passion and vigor.

Lee’s fascination with Chinese food began on March 30th, 2005, the day that the 110 Powerball players won second place. “It happened all across the country, not just in one locale,” she said, “so it wasn’t just like one group using the same number.” When the winners came to collect their money the next day, and were asked where they got their numbers, one after another each revealed, “from a fortune cookie.” Lee was so intrigued by this she decided, “to find the factory where that came from,” as well as the winners and restaurants.

And so she set out “on the road,” like a Chinese American version of Charles Kuralt, reporting the off-beat, small town encounters, quaint tales of life Americana, or oddball Chinese culinary trivia.   For example, who was General Tso, and was “General Tso’s Chicken” really his favorite dish?  The answer:  He was a military hero who helped end the Taiping Rebellion, and no, he did not eat the sweet and spicy fried chicken dish that bears his name.  In fact, explains Lee, in Tso’s rural hometown of Xiying in Hunan, his descendants have never even heard of the dish.  Why?  It's American.

Lee found this to be a recurring theme with other dishes as well, and it became the message of her book. She wanted people reading the book to think twice about what it means to be American. “A lot of this food that we think of as exotic or foreign is in fact largely indigenous to America,” said Lee. “Chop Suey, General Tso’s Chicken, Fortune Cookies, Beef with Broccoli, guess what?  Mostly served in America.  Chinese people look at it and are very confused,” she said.

While Kuralt went in search of the unsung American heroes, Lee found a few of her own along the way, such as the Powerball winner in Wyoming who founded the International Elvis Presley Fan Club at age 16. “She actually has a lot of hand written letters from Evis from when he was serving in Germany,” Lee said. “And he is a very bad speller.” Then there was Steve Yang, the guy in San Francisco who single- handedly coordinates the writing and printing of every tiny cookie fortune in the U.S.  He hires writers whose ideas come from American movies and popular culture rather than ancient Chinese proverbs.  One of Lee's favorites: "Try not.  Do, or do not, there is no try," from Jedi Master Yoda, not Confusius.  Lee celebrates the humble, colorful towns she passed though, like Caledonia, Minnessota, population 2, 965, the “wild turkey capital” of the state.

Born in New York City, Lee attended Harvard University, where she took after the rest of her number loving family and studied economics and applied math. But it was journalism that was her true calling. “I had an epiphany the summer between high school and college, that what I wanted to do for the rest of my life was to be a journalist,” she said. “I was interviewing a young guy who had tried to commit suicide twice because he was he was a young, gay, black teenager. And literally in the middle of the conversation as he was telling me about his attempts, I was like, ‘I could do this for the rest of my life.’

As for her obsession with Chinese food and quest for those fortune cookie makers, she said it was Freudian. “I realized that it was ultimately a journey to understand myself,” she said. “I am Chinese American. I get this question all the time, especially in New York City, where the taxi driver asks you, ‘Where’re you from?’ and I’m like, ‘I’m from here.’ And he’s like, ‘No, no, where’re you really from?’ I’m like, ‘I really am born and raised in Manhattan.’ And I know what they’re asking. Sometimes if I’m in a good mood I’ll give in, and I’m like, ‘I’m genetically Chinese.’ The point is, someone may look at me and think that I am foreign, but if you close your eyes you clearly hear someone who is American.” The quest itself was indicative of being American, as were all those uniquely American things that appealed to Lee “on the road.”