(extrait traduit de chinois à anglais)
Jing WANG
I never liked Belleville, perhaps I never will.
…….
Then, the daughter of Chen became ill. She coughed the night over, cried from the first sign of daylight to the descending curtain of winter night. “I’m not afraid of going out without paper” Chen told me, “So long as you look pregnant or have a baby with you, the police won’t hassle you.” She continued:”It’s just that I don’t speak French.” She waved a gesture, blew her nose, came to her conclusion:”Don’t want to get caught? You need to get yourself a baby very fast.”
We went to the Hôpital Robert Debré. She was covered by RMI, which means the treatment would be free. But naturally, what’s free from money doesn’t mean it’s also free from flawed reception and nasty attitude. We were badly received. The receptionist’s lips said what was not meant to be said by tongue, and the doctor was reluctant to prescribe medicines.
“Really, she’s alright”. The doctor told us kindly.
I thanked him, we went away.
Chen was enraged. She could not stop complaining on the way back. “It won’t be this simple if I were received by the doctors in my village, I promise you!”
I didn’t look up, focused on my steps and replied:
“What’s so good about staying here then?”
“You don’t know it, but I remember very clearly. My aunt looked really extravagant when she went back to the village ten years ago.”
I knew her aunt. She was a cunning old woman with a withered face. The time I saw her she was wearing a dark yellow cotton-padded coat, sitting behind a desk in her 15 square meter whole-sales cloth shop located in the 11st arrondissement of Paris. When she opened her wallet, you would want to know what magic she used to squeez such an amount of 200 and 500 euros notes in. Her literacy was limited to “this” and “that”. But in this low priced, Made in China cloth whole-sale business, literacy is one thing you don’t need, so long as you can count and have fingers to point. In fact, when a negotiation became heated, she was literary enough to say:”This, 4 euros 70? No can do!”
I had no idea how extravagant she looked in Chen’s memories.
These clothes look only good at the first sight. Your good impression disappears when you touch it, becomes worse when you try it. “Made in Italy” is generally printed on the tags. This might be true, but in a more factual way, it is “Made in Wenzhou (Italy)”. Their shrewdness and rustic nature are reflected in every detail from company names (“Love You Co.”) to overall poor craft work.
Her aunt would sell a mid long coats at 15 euros per piece starting from 12 pieces, while they are usually sold at 60 euros per piece in local French fancy dress retail shops during the season. Do a bit of calculation, it was easy to guess out the self cost of each piece should not surpass 9 euros. They controlled everything of this industry from materials, design, to manufacturing and wholesaling. But the fact could also be described reversely: they were controlled by the downstream market; they worked 14 hours a day at 1 euro for each hour, to feed and cloth the local retail merchants.
But the beautiful local consumers wouldn’t know a thing about its origin and stories. Because the ugly tags were cut off, because the “sans papiers” only exist in their own ecosystem.
The road continued, winter nights were long. When we were back to Belleville, dusk was already falling. Half of the sky was dark blue, leaving the other side still illuminated by afterglow. It would not be long before Belleville became silent, leaving lighted restaurant windows and hasted shadows alone.
I accompanied her to the door, told her to call me on emergency, and turned away.
During the summer eight years ago, Chen and Yang were in the middle of South-Eastern Asia rainforest. They stayed in shacks, waited for the felon to bribe the border guards and lead them out. In the winter they squeezed themselves in the cargo compartment of a small boat and set out for sea. Under the threat of diseases and seasick, a days was as long as eternity itself. New faces were seen in every transit depot. Some of them died, there they went, but the livings had to continue.
They started from Phnum Penh, arrived at Morocco six months later. They were lucky. But it was rumored by then the Spanish sea guards would not hesitate to shoot. This rumor became more dramatized each time it was cited. When the rumor was finally heard in their villages, Chen and Yang were almost regarded as heroes.
But the real dead men didn’t speak, they just disappeared.
Finally they arrived at Belleville, only to find out they have little choice but to accept to work 14 hours a day. Some families reunited, some are shattered like mirrors; some one climbed on the top of the ladder, most of the people just tolerate, endure. For the past 8 years they were young and generally happy. But they still have to wait another 16 years, until their daughter grew up, then she would apply for residency for her parents. But before that, the only practical use of the baby to the family is to prevent them from being deported. For the next 16 years, Chen and Yang must continue to hide, work, and to hope.
Their lives were composed of a series of segmented assumptions: “if we have our own restaurant, everything would be fine then”; “when our daughters grew up, things would finally be fine then.” To Chen and Yang, being “fine” means no longer need to bear the chain of misery, not like the others. In Belleville, this chain bound the family of Chen, Chunlan LIU who fell from a 5 storey building while escaping from the police (she was an acknowledged “pioneer worker”, a music lover 30 years ago), and whoever pulled the chain of misery or bound to it.
I don’t like Belleville. Every time I passed by, this winter seemed to be a little colder.
















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