PORT TOWNSEND — You are about to embark on a long voyage . . . .
That message, one of the pithy predictions found when you break open a Chinese fortune cookie, describes the voyage of discovery Grace Wing-Yuan Toy embarked on when she came here.
Toy, 30, is a poet who spent the last month at Fort Worden State Park as a Centrum creative artist in residence.
While here, she composed poems inspired by the messages inside fortune cookies.
When she arrived here from New Jersey, Toy brought her collection of fortunes and also asked people to send her slips they had saved.
She received about 75 in reply, including one from a man who read about her request in the Peninsula Daily News and sent her a fortune he found while going through his wife’s things after her death earlier this year.
“I was really touched that he sent it to me, not only because of his kindness but because it showed how much he loved her,” Toy said.
“My writing a poem was a way to return the kindness.”
Link to people
Toy sees the fortunes as a link to other people and to the generations of Chinese immigrants who spent their lives working to realize the American dream, usually in Chinese restaurants where the cookies were first served.
“What people don’t understand is that the fortune was not intended to be good luck for the people who ate the cookies, but for the owner and staff of the restaurant,” Toy said.
“It was used as a form of encouragement for the Chinese, that they would not only survive here but have good fortune or luck.”
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The rest of the story appears in the Tuesday Peninsula Daily News. Click on SUBSCRIBE, above, to get the PDN delivered to your home or office.