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The Perpetual Stranger -- A Chinese American's Letter from Paris
By Andrea Quong, New America Media
An American writer moving to Paris looked forward to a city of romance and
luxury, but found she couldn't shake her "outsider" status among the French. But
she finds hope in diverse immigrant neighborhoods where the walls between people
come down.
MONTREUIL, France- Nov 18, 2005-Before I moved to Paris a few years ago, a
French expatriate friend in Berkeley gave me her pocket-sized map of the city
and one piece of advice. "Whatever you do," she warned, "live in Paris. Don't
live in the suburbs."
From a distance, I couldn't have agreed more. Like many Americans, I believed
Paris was a romantic city de luxe, a place where the heart and the imagination
could take flight and, if one had money, a place where one could really live. It
seemed an appropriate setting to launch a romance with the man I had fallen in
love with.
He happened to be French. We'd met in Kunming, China, and now he was in Paris
writing up his dissertation on an obscure ethnic minority in China's Yunnan
Province.
When I arrived, he was living in a monastic chambre-de-bonne amid the rooftops
of the 9th arrondissement near the Gare du Nord. The toilet was in a broom
closet down the hall, and the shower a step away from the kitchenette and the
bed. At night, a tiny balcony afforded a majestic view of the Eiffel Tower
showering its pale light on the cold city, and the bakery downstairs made a
campaillette, a crustier and tastier version of the baguette, to die for. But
there wasn't enough room for both of us. We ended up moving to the suburbs.
The new flat was in Montreuil, a "proche banlieue" east of the city. Center city
was a 20-minute subway ride away, the périphérique, the big freeway that
encircles Paris, a block-and-a-half on foot. The neighborhood itself was dingy
with old, falling-apart apartment buildings and abandoned factories that were
being torn down to make way for sleek new office buildings. Still, if you looked
hard enough, you could spot the Eiffel Tower glimmering on the western horizon.
I was full of hope and open to the possibilities.
But that hope began to fade, replaced by the reality of life in the inner
suburbs, where Paris' facade of glamour and sophistication had fallen away. On
the street, my Asian face and my anglophone accent were clues that told my
neighbors, the boulanger, the video store kid, the newsstand owner, the
supermarket cashier, that I was an outsider. I'm not French, and it seems,
sometimes, that's all that matters.
One of the first things I noticed both in and out of Paris were the
cafeteria-like Chinese take-out joints. Based on the French model of the
traiteur, a caterer who sells pre-prepared food, none of the food is cooked on
order. Instead, spring rolls and shrimp dumplings of indeterminate age and
origin are kept on display in a refrigerated case. When a customer comes by, the
food is dished out into a plastic bin and popped into the microwave. That may
work for brandade de morue, but it violates the first principle of Chinese
cuisine that food be fresh and just-cooked, as any self-respecting Chinese cook
(or chowhound) from San Francisco to the Bronx knows. Discriminating and refined
when it comes to French food, the French come off as negligent, even willfully
ignorant, of the cuisines of other cultures. "Chinese" restaurants bill
themselves as serving Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and sometimes even Laotian and
Cambodian, all at the same time. It's all "chinois" or "asiatique:" Parisians
don't bother to make the distinction.
Nor does my downstairs neighbor, Jorge. Like many Parisians, he's perfectly
polite and often stops to chat and joke. Born in Argentina, he came to France
when he was 12; his wife, from Ecuador, has a similar story. At home they speak
Spanish together and play salsa, yet they are thoroughly French. Once, when I
was making small talk, I asked him if he had ever been to the States. "Never,"
he replied, forgetting that I was American he was so convinced I was from China.
"I'm just not at all interested in going there. There's something about
Americans I don't like."
The first time I went to the Sunday market in my neighborhood, I stood waiting
for 20 minutes while the market woman ignored me and served friends and
customers she knew. After two years, I'm now a regular customer at the market,
frequenting the same potato-seller, vegetable merchant and poulterer. Everyone
knows I am a foreigner -- maybe they even recognize my face (considering there
are few other Asians around) -- but no one has once asked where I'm from.
So I ended up befriending other outsiders.
In the beginning, there was Dirk, the German man who sold newspapers and dreamed
of riding the rails across America. When I met him he was stranded in Paris,
after falling out with his French girlfriend. Then I met Kamal, an
insulation-installer from Punjab who speaks neither French nor English but is
the most persistent of friends. Chiki is a knife-grinder of gypsy blood who
walks the streets of my neighborhood, ringing a big cow bell and pushing a cart
with a pedal-powered grindstone.
Among my boyfriend's family and friends, I've found acceptance and kindness. But
as my own person out in this world I've found there's no place for me here.
It's as if the people here are in a holding pattern, the social codes rigidly
upheld out of habit. The French, in Paris at least, won't cede social space for
an outsider -- unless that outsider is an admirer of French culture, history and
language, not the other way around. There is little room for exchange. And this
is the fatal flaw that prevents France from moving forward.
Ironically, where walls do come down are in ethnically mixed, working class
districts like Belleville, in northeastern Paris -- exactly the kind of place
France's top leaders hope tourists will never see. And yet, these "unattractive"
neighborhoods are among the most vibrant in the city.
At the morning market in Paris' Belleville, Chinese and African immigrants, the
latter clad in boldly patterned tunics and wraps, rub shoulders with Arab and
"white" shoppers. To be sure, this mix creates tensions, but it also creates
openings. Take the melon-seller, who, like most of the merchants, is from the
Maghreb, the French and Arabic term for North Africa. He sprinkles his
entreaties to the throng of customers with French and Arabic, and when he spots
a Chinese woman shopping, he inevitably yells out, "Ni hao!"
I never thought I would find that so charming.
Oakland, Calif.-born journalist and writer Andrea Quong is working on a book
set in the Chinese countryside.
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