Chinese signs reflected in roasted ducks.
Highs and Lows in Belleville
Former Country Playground Now Tasty Ethnic Stew
Paris Kiosque - May 1997 - Volume 4, Number 5
Copyright (c) 1997 Richard Erickson - used with permission
Coming out of the métro
at Belleville, the first thing I see is Chinese neon characters on a
grocery store. At the top of the stairs, I swing 180 degrees to my left and
see the Belleville intersection. There are no utility poles and wires in
the sky; except for the fast-food place on the opposite corner, it looks
like Shanghai.
Well it does and it doesn't. The taxis have Mercedes motors, not pedals.
There's not that many bicycles. The people are not all Chinese -
Indochinese - some are African, from both sides of the Sahara.
This is Belleville, at the corner of the 19th, 20th, 10th and 11th
arrondissements. This is Paris' 'number-two-son' Chinatown; the
'number-one-son' Chinatown is in the south 13th, on the other side of the
Seine.
The afternoon sun is headed towards warm, the air is headed towards
unclear; it is getting thick. Up the rue de Belleville, the shady side is
thick with signs in Chinese stacked at different heights and sizes.
Opposite, there is a characterless concrete building, probably city flats
above city services.
Beyond the
new, up the hill, there are more oriental businesses, in older
buildings.
Every kind of oriental restaurant you want in the rue de Belleville.
Every second place is a restaurant, and three-quarters of them have
take-away, with roasted ducks dark brown in the shop windows. Some
restaurants are Thai, some Laotian, some don't say exactly, unless you can
read Chinese. Wherever they are supposed to remind one of, Chinese writing
in neon, invariably says, 'Eat Here, Good Food!' - only quite a bit more
poetically. Or maybe they say, 'Dim Sim City.' I've forgotten all the
Chinese restaurant names I used to know - except for 'Green Door' and
'Orange Door.'
The supermarkets look like supermarkets with lots of Chinese writing on
them. Once on a train to Berlin, I shared a compartment with a student
couple who came to Paris to buy groceries. The 18-hour train ride had no
food service of any kind, and they shared some of their treasures with me.
I learned I liked oriental soft drinks no more than any others.
Between the restaurants, there are some fading small-scale French shops,
and some garish 'International' telephone parlors - with rates posted in
their windows, for Hanoi, Bangkok and Delhi. They look like game
joints.
About two blocks up from the métro exit, there are still signs in
Chinese, but there are more western shops. It is not a high-rent district,
and the upper floors of buildings are old and have lots of windows with
shutters. Down the side streets, the buildings are even less impressive. A
worker's district, still.
Aside from the obvious Chinese signs, Belleville is a village, where
classes and races are like a stew with very many ingredients in a
relatively small pot. After the Greeks, Turks, Antillians, Jews and Arabs,
the Asiatics have arrived. The variety is astonishing, but the balance
seems to be in equilibrium - the world's bazar of people at the crossroads
of the earth.
In the midst of this, two good-old-days French bar-cafés with the
rue Dénoyez holding them apart. Behind them, in this old-time
street, all was slated for demolition, but with the original plan of
destruction has been derailed by a citizen's group.
'Lower' Belleville is the part on the other side of the big
intersection, with the 10th arrondissement on the north and the 11th on the
south. All Belleville, divided by the wall of the Fermiers
Généraux, was reunited in 1860, although divided into four
arrondissements. The administration probably takes place at a round table
in the back room of a local restaurant.
The arrival of Russian and Polish Jews was followed in the '50's by
Tunisian Jews, North Africans and Yugoslavs, who came to work in the car
factories. They in turn were followed by Turks, for the clothing industry;
and by the Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, and finally by the orientals.
Many working-class French have stayed to work in the many small ateliers
and back-alley workshops, and the amount of renovation in this
working-class area has not been so thorough as on the other side of the
intersection.
A few hundred metres stroll in the rue du Faubourg-du-Temple, gives a
pretty good idea of the old village of Belleville, especially
with the
light the way it is today - one side in complete shadow and the side I
take in complete, and warm, sunshine. In the contrast, black water glitters
in the gutters as street cleaners open the taps to sluice the litter down
the drains. At street corners, I hop small lakes and reflecting rivers.
The slightly quieter-looking rue du Faubourg-du-Temple is teeming in the
afternoon shadows.
There are a number of names from another time as well - the Cour de la
Grâce de Dieu, inside has not the expected slum, but old, repainted
and tidy. Disappointing: Le Java, an ex- bal musette, shuttered and
un-renovated.
Given the numerous origins of the inhabitants, these are lively
neighborhoods, reminiscent of Eastern Europe or near Asia. As far as I
know, no tour buses have Belleville on their itineraries, but a
métro ticket will get you here just as well as anyplace else in
Paris.
Pre-Industrial - It Was Fun While It Lasted
After France had somewhat recovered from the excesses of being an
Empire, the expansion of the population of Paris put constant pressure on
those living within the city's walls - and this pressure often caused the
walls to be extended ever outwards.
Courtille, now Belleville, was beyond the wall, then it was cut in two
by a new wall; finally it was annexed to the city. But as long as it was on
the outskirts, it was a popular destination for having picnics and parties,
or simply, fêtes.
What I have been loosely calling 'Upper' or 'Lower' Belleville were
called Haute-Courtille and Basse-Courtille in the last century. 'Courti' is
an old word from Picardy, signifying a place where ordinary people could
have fêtes outside, as in a beer-garden. The 'Haute' part was mainly
guinguettes, or country-style bar- restaurant-dancehalls where citizens
from the city enjoyed themselves on weekends.
The lower part of the Haute-Courtille, about where I've been walking
after leaving the métro, was a area of solid buildings - mainly
devoted to the same purposes. At the end of mardi-gras, these places did
their best business, with wine 'flowing in rivers.' In 1830 they said, "To
see Paris during the 'Courtille,' it is like seeing Rome without the
Pope."
On ash-Wednesday morning, as many as a 1,000 carriages filled with
overnight revelers would descend from the Courtille and parade, throwing
eggs, flour; to the Grands Boulevards, while tens of thousands lined the
streets.
One of these revelers, popularly named 'Mylord Arsouille,' led the
'descente de la Courtille' four times with a vast equipage; the last being
in 1838 just before he was bankrupted. One of the starting points, from
1830, was Dénoyez' tavern, to which was added the public dancehall,
the Folie-Dénoyez. There is a bar with a name
like this at
the corner of the present rue Denoyez and rue de Belleville.
Modern grocery across
rue de Belleville from
old location of the
'Folie-Dénoyez.'
Much of the same atmosphere reigned in Basse-Courtille, or Courtille du
Temple as it was also known. There were many cabarets which were very
popular, from the beginning of the Recency period and onward.
It was the popularity of these - the cabarets and the bals, folies, and
the country-style ginguettes - that led to the Haussmannian frenzy of
parks-building, such as in this case, at the nearby Buttes-Chaumont. The
little people were having too much of a good time, and the parks were meant
as a socially constructive and healthy alternative - to sitting around
eating and drinking, doing a little dancing, in a popular garden
atmosphere.
Every place in south Germany that has a beer tap and a smidgen of park,
has a beer garden, even today. Although there are still some guinguettes
out along the Marne - far enough out, I suppose - modern Parisians have to
make do with the good Baron's sanitary parks, and modern amusement parks,
or stay home and watch Forumula One racing on TV.
Before I start sobbing about the 'good old days,' I better sniff out
some of these, not illegal, still existent, places of horrible pleasure -
Paris' equivalent of the beer-garden, the Courtille, in short. I better do
it before summer.
Richard Erickson, living in Paris for the last twenty years, has been putting
Paris online as long as anyone. More of his writings can be found in
Metropole Paris
where this article first appeared.
He can be contacted via
erickso@world-net.sct.fr.
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