You may have seen the educational inserts for fortune cookies that now seem prevalent. The front is more a saying or a quote than a fortune prediction, and the back is a primer on learning Chinese and playing Lotto or Keno.It never ceases to amaze me that the symbols these inserts are showing are somehow readable AND pronounceable to someone who knows Chinese. And there are more than a few. I got a kick out of the one that I've actually gotten a few times that has a symbol and the word TANG, phonetically telling me how the symbol is pronounced and that it means "sugar." You mean the orange drink powder that astronauts (Wally Schirra, et al.) started to use in the 60s and was later marketed nationwide, TANG, is how sugar is pronounced in Chinese? Alert the media.
Today's fortune cookie insert continues to induce contemplation.
The symbols transcribed here are actually a little more simplistic than the ones on the insert, which each look like a forest of apartment house rooftop TV antennas along Northern Boulevard in the 50s and 60s. These two symbols mean "strawberry."
You really wonder what the novel Moby Dick looks like translated in Chinese.
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