Portraits of Belleville: Little Wen Zhou

We spend a lot of time on this blog gushing about Belleville - how much we love it, why we love it, all the great/cool/weird things we notice on a daily basis. For the most part, by "Belleville," we've meant the geographical entity in northwest Paris (composed of the adjacent parts of the 19th and 20th arrondissements), a place with a certain social and multi-cultural identity, a place whose history overlaps with that of the rest of Paris but remains somewhat distinct, even today.

What we haven't gushed about enough is the one thing that defines Belleville more than physical boundaries, more than historical roots, more than any other aspect - its residents. So for the next week, we're going to try something different, devoting each day to a different person, family, or group that makes Belleville such a meaningful and rewarding place to live.

We dedicate our first portrait to the community that seems most closely identified with Belleville in the Parisian imagination: the Chinese.

As a portrait goes, this shot is not so hot - although the reflection in the restaurant window is kind of neat. What this picture does really well, however, is hit you over the head with the Chineseness of Belleville. Here's something closer to an actual portrait:

The main "Chinatown" of Paris, in the 13th arrondissement, was created by Teochew and Cantonese immigrants, whereas Belleville's Chinese population is the result of a more recent wave of immigration from the Wenzhou region of China. (The third and smallest Parisian enclave of Chinese is in the 3rd arrondissement, near Métro Arts et Métier.) If we originally expected to get a lot better at French from talking with people in our neighborhood, all the bilingual storefronts quickly suggested otherwise.

But no hard feelings - we love being surrounded by an unfamiliar language, we love seeing tantalizing food in shop and restaurant windows, we love learning new customs and facing new challenges. After all, that's why we came to Paris in the first place. Little did we know that we'd be immersing ourselves in two new cultures for the price of one!