French/Chinese

At the heart of French political and social ideology is a fierce belief in le droit à l’indifférence, or the right to be treated like everybody else. Since the 1980s, France’s stance has transitioned from one of xenophobic tendencies to an idea of le creuset français, or a melting pot, embracing a race/culture/religion-neutral paradigm.

The goal: an assimilation of the minorities.

As a result, the term “ethnicity” has often been avoided in French discourse, and hyphenated identities, such as Italo-Franco, are not used.

For my senior thesis at Brown University, I wanted to examine the Chinese immigrant experience in Paris. Against this backdrop of homogenizing forces, how have Chinese immigrants defined their own space and identity in French society? What sorts of barriers and pressures do Chinese immigrants continue to face within their own communities? How does this differ across generations? And how have these things changed over time?

I interviewed and photographed first and second-generation Chinese immigrants located throughout Paris and conducted participatory observations in the three Chinatown neighborhoods: Belleville, Rue au Maire, and Porte de Choisy.

Temple Celeste, Rue au Maire, 3rd arrondissement

Roseline, 22, student

Residence: 12th arr.

Ethnicity: Chaozhou

At the beginning of our interview, Roseline stated outright, “I have no Chinese friends.” While she grew up in a predominately Asian district, she felt, “more like a French than Chinese, and when my mother sent me in the Chinese school, I just skipped school, like most of the days and I felt like quite, like, not like them."

She currently studies Literature at La Sorbonne, and is writing a master's thesis on the classification of graphic novels and comic books. She considers her fun activities traditionally French, e.g. listening to Serge Gainsbourg and frequenting the cinemas with friends.

While her family is ethnically Chinese, her parents were both born in Cambodia. However, they didn’t meet until after they had both immigrated to France in the late 1970's, escaping the instability and violence gripping Cambodia.

After moving to France and both gaining citizenship (her mom failed the test three times, while her father passed immediately), her parents met in the 13th arrondissement. Her mother was a seamstress, and her father the deliveryman who brought her the textiles and fabrics.

Today, her parents are divorced. Roseline attributes their separation to their different ways of life, which "are reflected in their capacity of the [French] language." Her mother’s French is accented and she rarely speaks it, while her father is practically fluent. As such, Roseline believes her father is more integrated in the Parisian French community, while her mother maintains a more insular lifestyle.

Vincent, 27, Architect

Residence: 13th arr.

Ethnicity: Chaozhou

Vincent is full of youthful energy. He cruises along the streets of Paris on a motor scooter and instagrams his meals. He used to live in the 18th arrondissement, which was designated a ZEP (zone d’education prioritaire) area. “It’s not poor, it’s just a place where people have to be helped,” he described. There were very few Chinese people, and he used to be ridiculed for his small eyes (les yeux bridés) and yellow skin, usually by his Arabic and black classmates and neighbors.

Vincent still lives with his parents and sisters in the 13th arrondissement, partially for financial reasons, but mostly because of his close ties to his parents and family. Although he was born in France, he had to apply for French nationality due to the legal system. He was nationally still a Cambodian after birth since his parents entered the country as Cambodian refugees.

As an architect, he recently helped redesign a school. He believes his position as French-born Chinese sets him apart from other architects. Because of his background, he has a different way of perceiving the use of space and barriers than French people. At the same time, his French education has pushed him to design and create differently than Chinese architects in China.

Name: Zhuoyeng, 27, Teacher

Residence: South of Paris

Origin: Sichuan

Zhuoyeng is constantly smiling. Perhaps it’s the outcome of having to teach middle school students Chinese, but she has an openness to her, which doesn’t belie the difficulties she faced upon her arrival to Paris around 5 years ago.

Although she enrolled directly into a French-speaking university, her French was mediocre at best. As a result, she didn’t make very many French friends, and vividly remembers moments where her professors looked down on her for not being French. However, now she holds a government post as a teacher, enjoys the Parisian lifestyle, and even has a French boyfriend.

While she appears quite settled into her life in Paris, her future is less certain. “I think, in this moment I will continue to teach. If one day I need to change my way and I told myself, I give everything that I have here, and I will go other where. Why not? I don’t know if I can make this decision one day in the future, I don’t know because I…can’t decide something easily, but perhaps one day, when I’m quite annoyed? Bored by the situation…” she explained.

At the moment, she still holds onto her Chinese identity tightly. “Because I speak that language, and I have family in China. So I considered as Chinese and I want to keep my Chinese nationality also.”

Name: Yann

Age: 26

Profession: IT

Residence: Seine Saint-Denis

Ethnicity: Wenzhou

Yann grew up in the suburbs of Paris, in Seine Saint-Denis, where his parents own a shop. “They have a messy shop, you have a lot of things, they sell luggages, dishes, clothes..." he described. Both of his great grandfather came to France during World War I, but only his father’s grandfather stayed in France afterward. "He left his Chinese family and redid a new life in France with a new wife,” said Yann. This initial connection with France, combined with the belief that it was “fancy to go abroad,” convinced Yann’s father to leave China despite some initial trepidation of not knowing anyone or the language.

While Yann never really engaged with the Chinese community as a child, he still has a strong sense of family obligation, which describes as "traditionally Chinese," and defines many of his decisions in life.

He is currently dating a Chinese woman, and he said his family would be uncomfortable if he were to have a French girlfriend. “Because they want a very close family, it will be very difficult for them for communicating, because they are not able to speak French very well. And they’re afraid that the girl won’t be able to speak Chinese. They are also afraid about the culture. The Chinese culture is very different form the Western one.”

Name: Sacha, 35, Restaurant Owner

Residence: 4th arr.

Ethnicity: Wenzhou

I interviewed Sacha at the back of his restaurant, Hoa Tong, which rests at the foot of the Centre Pompidou Museum, attracting an interesting mix of wandering tourists and large Asian parties.

Sacha is first and foremost a thinker, or in his words, a “digger, digging to find more than what’s in front of you,” he explained. “People live superficially, but there’s a whole invisible world out there.” Born in France in 1976 to two Chinese immigrants, his childhood was one of chaos and neglect. Only one year prior, his parents and elder two brothers, 5 and 6 years old at the time, fled from China and the Cultural Revolution and came to France because Sacha’s grandfather had already been living there since the 1960s.

Sacha’s parents never voluntarily talk about this time, as it makes them uncomfortable. “Their life is built on that fear, on that demon. That fear of not eating, that fear of being chased, you know, that fear of not having anything to raise their child. So they are marked in their hearts, in their souls,” he said. Because of this, Sacha was left alone for much of his childhood as his family focused on building “a little Chinatown.”

Sacha is very thoughtful in speech, and he weaves in traces of existential ideas and philosophical reflections. He has spent much of his life questioning everything around him, stuck in a state of “illusion,” but he feels that he’s finally developed a clear idea of the System—those forces that subconsciously shape how we think and act. Now, he feels he has a great deal of agency in defining who he is, and what’s important to him.

“So sometimes I’m French, sometimes I’m Chinese. Sometimes I’m Wenzhou, sometimes I’m a citizen of the world. I give myself the freedom to adapt and to choose what I want to wear today, which character I want to be. But it never affects who I am. It’s just a costume. It’s a real, real, real chance.”

Today he is the president of L’Association de Jeunes Chinois, which he believes was an outlet for him to “begin another interaction with people, who had no illusions anymore, who did not choose one of the two main patterns that is follow your parents life pattern or follow the French life pattern.”

Name: Christian, 36, IT

Residence: La Défense

Ethnicity: Chaozhou

Christian’s family came to France because of music. It started before the boat people and before the Cultural Revolution, roughly 40 years ago. After graduating from high school, Christian’s aunt moved to France to study piano at a conservatory. After setting down new roots—she opened a shop, arranged cultural exchanges between French and Chinese students and even earned an award from the French government—she insisted that Christian’s mom join her in France. But Christian’s mom didn’t want to come. “I had a good job in China, I studied chemistry, chemical engineering, and I had a job in a firm specializing in inspecting import/export goods,” she said.

Over time though, after all her other relatives had moved to France and as she considered Christian's future, Christian’s mother made the final decision to leave China when Christian was 14 years old.

Christian has no desire for small talk and has this naïve bullheadedness that counters any efforts at subtlety. While he came to France as a teenager, his mother insists that he is “half French, half Chinese. Some of his ideas are quite different from ours.” Christian though maintains that he’s Chinese through and though. He works at a technology company, his closest friends are Chinese, and he reads the Chinese newspaper everyday.