Quartier asiatique (Paris)
The Quartier asiatique ( German Asiatic Quarter ) or Quartier des Olympiades is located in the 13th arrondissement of the French capital Paris between Avenue d'Ivry and Avenue de Choisy, south of Rue de Tolbiac.
Migrants from Vietnam , China , Laos and Cambodia as well as Chinese from French Polynesia and French Guiana and Vietnamese from New Caledonia live in Europe's largest Chinatown . In total, over 200,000 Asians live in the “Asiatown of Paris” (as of 2004).
history
In September 1914 it became clear that the First World War , particularly in Flanders , would be long and costly. Therefore, the Allied powers enlisted both workers and soldiers from their colonies for support.
The British Army created a Labor Corps with volunteer civilians; it comprised 100,000 Egyptians, 21,000 Indians and 20,000 South Africans (Western Front and Middle East added together). In May 1916, a bilateral agreement was signed between France and the United Kingdom, on the one hand, and China, on the other hand, which opened the way for Chinese workers to come to France and work under the supervision of the Allies. The Chinese came mainly from Shandong and Jilin provinces . France also brought workers from Indochina (French colony since 1885). Working in Europe was exploitation - the British paid them one franc for ten hours of work - and communication was difficult. Most of the Chinese who did not return to China after World War I worked in factories around Paris and were the founding fathers of what would later become Paris' Chinatown.
The majority of the residents did not come to the country until the 1970s, when mainly members of the Chinese minority fled the instability in Southeast Asia ( Vietnam War , Sino-Vietnamese War , rule of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia ). These settled mainly in the newly built apartment blocks in the south of the 13th arrondissement, so that the area gradually got an Asian majority and a corresponding infrastructure was created.
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.fairkehr-magazin.de/fileadmin/user_upload/fairkehr/archiv/2004/fair_0404/reise/paris.htm
- ↑ http://www.remembrancetrails-northernfrance.com/learn-more/nations-in-war/chinese-labourers-in-northern-france-during-the-great-war.html
