THE instructions on the red wrapper are very explicit: (1) Open the packaging. (2) Use both hands to break open the fortune cookie. (3) Retrieve and read the fortune. (4) Eat the cookie.

In China, such details are necessary, it seems.

“Chinese people don’t know what to do with a fortune cookie,” said Nana Shi, who started an online business last October that is likely the only company currently selling fortune cookies in China. “They don’t know that you have to open it.”

Although most Americans think of fortune cookies as Chinese, the crispy curved wafers that are given away free by the billions in the United States every year are all but unknown in China.