A major sociological shift is underway in Paris as the traditional "bar-tabacs" -- the cafe-cum-cigarette shops that have formed part of the city's identity for generations -- are being bought up by French Chinese.
According to the Tobacconists' Union, around a quarter of the capital's bar-tabacs are now run by Chinese owners as the original proprietors move out of what they see as an increasingly unprofitable business.
"At least 50 percent of sales of bar-tabacs over the last year have been to French nationals of Chinese origin," union president Gerard Bohelay says.
Since the 1970s French Chinese have been a major presence in the 13th arrondissement in the southeast of the capital, but now entrepreneurs are moving out of so-called "Chinatown" into new neighborhoods.
"It used to be people from Auvergne [in central France] or Brittany who came up to Paris to open bistros. Now it is increasingly the Chinese who are taking over these family businesses. The customers cannot see any difference," Bohelay says.
In a bar-tabac on the boulevard Port-Royal in the Montparnasse quarter, young Chinese staff serve a group of middle-aged clients with beers and the traditional Parisian croque-monsieur (toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich). In a corner, owner Hugo Jin takes charge of cigarette and lottery ticket sales.
"I used to be the owner of a Chinese restaurant. But the competition was too strong, I couldn't make ends meet. With bar-tabacs at least there are trading rules. Prices are regulated," says Jin, who took over the cafe in 2001.
"Things could be better here, but we are managing. I am doing it for my children who are aged one and two. I don't want them to have to do what I am doing. It's not a career. I have to work 13 hours a day," he says.
At a nearby bistro -- the Verre a Pied -- the owner Claude Derrien says he can "understand perfectly well why the French are selling up to the Chinese."
"I have had this bistro for 22 years and my profits have been going down constantly," he says. "Mainly it's because cigarette sales are falling, but there are also all these cheap restaurants that are springing up like mushrooms."
"The Chinese who buy up the bar-tabacs put a lot of money into video games, lottery sales and so on. Whether we like it or not, that is the way things are going. The traditional bistro that we used to love may not be here for long," he says.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
RSS