In Search of Fortune Cookies in America’s Heartland
How the American spirit fueled a Chinese Restaurant
A symphony of mechanical whirring coaxed my father awake. When he looked out the window, what he saw bewildered him.
The vast wheat fields he saw from his apartment, perched on a slight hilltop, had undergone a remarkable transformation. When he arrived just the day before, he faced a sea of lush green and golden stalks that stretched over acres of land.
When he woke up, the wheat field was completely harvested.
At a distance, he spotted a tractor gliding across the field, leaving behind a trail of neatly cut wheat stubble. In a single sweep, the powerful machinery was cutting, threshing, and collecting the wheat. As if aided by invisible rulers, the tractor systematically traversed the field up and down in precise straight rows.
For the first time, my father grasped how the United States was able to feed its own people, a stark contrast to the agricultural practices he was familiar with in China.
My parents had worked in wheat fields when they were sent to the countryside during China’s Cultural Revolution. They had labored, sowing wheat seeds and manually harvesting the crop. My dad recalled how they waded through rows of wheat, stooping down…
