Videos
ALL | FRANCE | SOCIETY/ECONOMY | WORLD
PARIS / Chinatown on the Seine
PARIS / Chinatown on the Seine
The Indo-Chinese and Chinese of Cantonese origin have made their home in what has become the Parisian Chinatown. Very quickly, they started moving into the high-rise apartment buildings of Les Olympiades in the 13th arrondissement.
Text : Geneviève De Lacour - Photos : Stéphane Gautier
Text : Geneviève De Lacour - Photos : Stéphane Gautier
Right next to Les Olympiades, there stands another building symbolic of the Chinese community in the 13th: the church Notre Dame de Chine (Our Lady of China). Father Wang conducts services every Sunday in this brand new church. But the building is more than a place of worship: 800 children learn Chinese here. Between those from Indochina and others from northeastern China, 100,000 - possibly even 200,000 - Chinese have settled in the capital, without counting the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants.
In front of the grocery shop windows in Belleville, the hubbub of hand trucks carrying Chinese fruits and vegetables begins at dawn. By 9am, elderly Chinamen have gathered in the park of the Buttes-Chaumont for their tai-chi-chuan session. On weekends, they make way for young newlyweds posing by the lake for the photographer’s camera. Then, the bride dressed all in white gets into a limousine, also white, that will slowly drive down the Rue de Belleville before stopping in front of one of the Chinese restaurants in the neighbourhood.
In front of the grocery shop windows in Belleville, the hubbub of hand trucks carrying Chinese fruits and vegetables begins at dawn. By 9am, elderly Chinamen have gathered in the park of the Buttes-Chaumont for their tai-chi-chuan session. On weekends, they make way for young newlyweds posing by the lake for the photographer’s camera. Then, the bride dressed all in white gets into a limousine, also white, that will slowly drive down the Rue de Belleville before stopping in front of one of the Chinese restaurants in the neighbourhood.