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  • The Atlantic

    The Westernization of Emoji

    The takeout box and the fortune cookie are perceived as emblems of Chinese culture, when they’re actually central to the American experience of it.
    by Adrienne LaFrance May 22, 2017 5 minutes
    Source: Yiying Lu

    When the restaurant Fortune Cookie opened in Shanghai, in 2013, local patrons were mystified. The food was Chinese, but also not Chinese at all. Dishes like crab rangoon, sticky orange chicken, and fortune cookies, are staples of American Chinese food. They’re rarely found in China.

    Fortune Cookie’s owners wanted to introduce China to Chinese food as Americans know it—characterized by startlingly sweet flavors and laughably huge portions. For authenticity, the restaurant’s owners had to import ingredients like Skippy peanut butter and Philadelphia cream cheese. And when restaurant staffers first saw the white-and-red takeout boxes, some of them gathered around to take photographs. The cardboard containers seemed like something out of a sitcom to Chinese workers, who had only ever seen them before on American television shows and the , Fortune Cookie’s owners at the time.

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