The non-Chinese origin of the fortune cookie is humorously illustrated in Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club, in
which a pair of Chinese immigrant women find jobs at a fortune cookie factory in America. They are amused by the unfamiliar
concept of a fortune cookie but, after several hilarious attempts at translating the fortunes into Chinese, come to the conclusion
that the cookies contain, not wisdom, but "bad instruction."
There is a common joke involving fortune cookies that involves appending "in bed", "with a battle axe" or "between the
sheets" to the end of the fortune, usually creating a sexual innuendo or other bizarre messages (e.g., "Every exit is an entrance
to new experiences [in bed]" or "You will solve your greatest problem [with a battle axe]").
Although many people do not take the message in a fortune cookie as a serious oracular device, many of them consider it part of the game that the entire cookie must be consumed in order for the fortune to come true.[3] Variations on this idea include not eating the cookie if a fortune seems unlucky, or the idea that the entire cookie
must be eaten before the fortune is read.
