The joy is not only the sweet, crunchy taste but also the message inside. I recently found my stash of 34 fortunes. What was I thinking? It has been a while. I started saving them for the vocabulary words. A dear friend of mine adopted two daughters from China. They were studying the language. I prepared to test them with my fortune cookie vocabulary.
Not only does the fortune reveal messages but also the lucky lottery numbers with a vocabulary word. Now that is a value proposition for a small slip of paper.
My favorite message is “You are one of the people who will go places in life.” Of the 34 messages there was one duplicate. “Your heart is pure, your mind is clear and soul devout.”
The most frequent “lucky number” was 35 with 16, 19 and 29 in second place.
I have come to understand that Chinese fortune cookies are more Japanese than Chinese. The name changed as a consequence of World War II. Also, this link makes fortunes available with a click. www.fortunecookiemessage.co
http://foodbeast.com/2013/06/21/today-i-learned-fortune-cookies-originated-in-japan-not-china
The vocabulary words on my fortune collection are: they, welcome, swim, bank, April, telephone, friends, January, refuel, opportunity, question, spring water, snowflake, supervisor, hurry, son, pen, eggplant, front door, sun, good bye, milk, cassette tape and money.
This list of random words reminds me of the creative writing exercise using the names of paint chips for inspiration.
Combining the Chinese vocabulary in the Japanese poetry style of Haiku…..
Opportunity
Knock @ front door, “Hurry son.”
They telephone bank.
Welcome friends to work
Question for supervisor
Money for milk, pen?
January sun
Snowflake melting, Good bye
Swim in April
Record cassette tape
Refuel, eat eggplant dinner
Drink of spring water.
Understanding these words in Chinese would be better 🙂 Good thing that organizing one’s desk doesn’t have this many diversions, but one thing leads to another.
elfcroft 
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