A Tree Grows in Belleville

We hosted a dinner last night. The menu was ersatz Japanese – California rolls, classic Benihana steakhouse salad, braised daikon and lotus root, Yakinuki pork belly charcoal-grilled at the table on our indoor BBQ – all prepared by my family, and all for my birthday. For the cake, my eldest daughter and one of my best friends made a galette des rois, by far the finest anyone at the table had ever tasted. And then, finally, it was over. All of it. The holidays, the year, the birthday, done, finished. This is my most treasured moment of every calendar year, just after the birthday’s champagne brightness fades and the darkness drops; and the entire yule season, its hour come round at last, slumps into its chrysalis, spins out the last of its tinsel silks to close the cocoon, and pupates through the night. Then, come morning, with fluttering shudders it splits open the shroud and emerges, its great careless wings unfolded, and slouches towards February, a rough beast in search of new bewitching flame.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the parties, the food, the tree, the baubles, even the carols. Though Bing quickly gets on my nerves. As does Burl and Dean, even Frank and Nat after a couple of listens. Soon the King’s Singers sound like Eddie Izzard taking the piss out of the Church of England – “Hallelujah, hallelujah, joyfully we lark about” – but even drearier and without the humour. Not even the amazing Chilly Gonzales master class that I listened to awhile back – on Baroque counterpoint in George Michael’s “Last Christmas” – could keep that song from killing me harshly, its refrains earworming through my brain for weeks straight, hollowing out my soul like a spoon in a Halloween pumpkin.

This year, to save me from tears
I'll give it to someone special

I’m an old man, I like routines. So, it is with great relief to finally find myself at the top of this year exactly where I was at the bottom of the last, on the second floor of the library of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-Belleville (ENSAPB), at a table near a window overlooking the leafless maple trees in the wide courtyard, well within earshot of the elevator’s pentachordal chime.

Ee-ong.

No complaints. A choice between the elevator and, say, “I Saw Mama Kissing Santa Claus,” which I probably heard on spotifying loop at least twice a day throughout the month of December? No contest. And the walk over was exceptionally pleasant. No rain, the air quality just below «Bonne», and a bewildering variety of flora in full profusion. Which is, yes, pleasant, but also of course wildly disturbing. Almost mid-January and 13°C (56°F)? WTF? The potted wisteria and olive trees outside our door are budding, as are the crocuses and daffodils beneath them. The planted grass in the road verge and tree wells are struggling in litter-strewn mud, but the city’s «zéro pesticide» policy keeps the weeds flourishing in every building niche and sidewalk crack. Especially the wondrous palmier du ghetto, Ailanthus altissima, the “heaven-tree” that grows like hell where nothing else survives.

The photo above is from Ailanthus Altissima, a monograph by the French artist and architect Simon Boudvin, published by B52 in 2021. For ten years Boudvin documented the development of a population of heaven-trees in eastern Paris. Some grew as much as 15m/50ft.

Ailanthus takes root where humans have left their mark but do not like to linger; it is a ruderal species (from the Latin rudus, ruderis, “rubble”), meaning that it grows in an anthropised environment… Its leaflets - the small leaves that form a compound leaf, as with clover or acacia - are equipped with regulatory glands, real energy reserves that can be mobilised in case of a hard blow. As for reproduction, the tree does double duty: insects and wind fertilise its flowers and disperse its many seeds (300,000 per tree per year) … The ailante is also able to reproduce from its extensive root system, each fragment of which can give rise to a new individual. The more stressed (injured, pruned or cut) the tree is, the more it will sprout new shoots.

Source: Christelle Granja

The ghetto palm – the name comes from Detroit, apparently – is highly adaptive.

It can withstand temperatures down to -13°C/8.6°F), loves acidic soils, and positively thrives on atmospheric pollution, especially sulphur and mercury. Simon Boudvin: “Under the impermeable layer of the pavement, it finds fill soil that is often low in nutrients, if not enriched by nitrogen from urine, loaded with heavy metals, sometimes soaked in hydrocarbons, and occasionally sprinkled with salt.”

The French nobility loved these robust ornamentals, which Jesuit missionaries brought to France from China in 1751. The Sun King cultivated them in the royal gardens at Versailles. Hundreds of thousands were planted for silkworm farms – it was thought to attract Bombyx mandarina, the wild relative of the domesticated silk moth. Nothing came of this venture. Still, Baron Haussmann, enamoured of their elegance, lined his avenues with them. Today, however, they are classified as an “invasive alien species.” Border controls are in place, and a national action plan for their eradication.

Alien? Everything French-borne on my birthday dinner plate, including the daikon, which came from Brittany, and the avocados, which came from the Côte d’Azur, was alien to these parts once. The classification, according to the urban ecologist Audrey Murate, is off the mark: “To present foreign infiltration as catastrophic for indigenous communities is absurd. These arguments, which are akin to calls against immigration in the human sphere, are devoid of scientific rigour but not of nauseating ideologies.”

Which leads me away from the flora to the fauna, also in visible abundance on my walk this morning; and dominated, for me at least, by two local varieties – busik drivers and Dongbei women.

The drivers sell goods. The women sell themselves.

There were three of the former – zarobitchany – distributing groceries from the backs of their white busiks, which were parked end-to-end in front of the library. Surrounding the vans were burly men drinking Obolon tall boys. Obolon is Europe's largest single beer manufacturer. It is brewed in Kyiv. All the other products inside the busiks were also from Ukraine. And selling out fast.

Before the war, there were thought to be around 30,000 Ukrainians in the Paris region, half of them undocumented. That number has since swelled – last November, there were 118,994 Ukrainian refugees registered on French soil. Craving for comfort food from the motherland is at an all-time high.

By the time I got to the vans, which, coincidentally, were parked next to a stalwart stand of heaven-trees, the Obolon beers were gone, as were the big plastic bottles of Chernihivske beer from Chernihiv, the site of the first siege of the war with Russia. Gone too were the slabs of cured salo lard, smoked kovbasa sausages, braids of smoked kosychka cheese, tvorog cottage cheese, baked ryazhanka milk, borodinsky custard rye bread and most of the pickles – cabbage, cukes, garlic, beets, herbs, apples and tomatoes. There were still some jars of smoked Baltic sprats in the boxes in the back of the trucks, along with some industrial brand mustard and mayo, a few packets of sweets – the kind only homesick Ukrainians would find appealing – and, hidden beneath, bottles of Ukrainian vodka, illegally imported (the police apparently look the other way when it comes to beer) and most of it cheap – around the same price per bottle as a 1.5L Chernihivske. Some, birch or honey pepper flavoured, were more expensive, but still priced well below what they cost in Paris shops.

People were also dropping off things they wanted to send back to Ukraine, at a cost of 1.5 euros a kilo. Boxes mainly, containing, presumably, food, clothes, medical supplies. Maybe some wine. Furniture, too, including some very large pieces. And, if there is any room left, passengers, at around 100 euros a ticket.

And then, out of a van stepped a burly man, hitching up his belt.

Followed by a Dongbei in uniform — cinched black puffer jacket, black skirt, black leggings, high black boots.

Dongbei is the nickname that Belleville Chinese, most of whom migrated from the Wenzhou region in the south-east of China, give to the women who work the boulevard on which ENSAPB is located. Most of whom come from the Dongbei region of northeastern China, on the border with North Korea. This morning I counted three dozen standing in small groups or leaning alone against the walls of the pho restaurants, Chinese supermarkets and cellphone shops on the boulevard. There were more queueing in front of the Western Union office, waiting to wire money back to their families in China.

Dongbei is where the Maoists launched their military takeover of China in 1948. It was, until recently, the country’s industrial base. Now it’s China’s Rust Belt, as focus under China’s socialist market economy reforms switched to higher tech and light manufacturing in the south. Eleven million people have left in search of work this decade. Around .018% of these, roughly 2,000 but growing in number (there were 100 in 2003, 750 in 2012), are Belleville Dongbei – well-educated woman mainly in their 40s, qualified workers, shopkeepers, teachers, accountants, nurses and managers, who paid smugglers 8,000-12,000 euros to get to Paris on short-term visas.

Why Paris?

Because they had heard that there were lots of nail salons, restaurants and massage parlours here where they could make some fast cash to pay for their kids’ schooling and weddings back in China, or for their parent’s medical expenses.

However, almost all Chinese commerce here is run by Wenzhou.

The Wenzhou population is well-established; they came in earlier waves of immigration. Many look down at, or openly despise, the people of Dongbei, who are often better educated. So they don’t hire them. The Dongbei, then, in debt and undocumented, with little or no French, put on puffer jackets and stand in the streets. Where, because of changes in prostitution laws in 2016, which make it legal to sell sex but illegal to buy it, clients are dodgier, violence common, and identity checks by the police frequent, even though the women are not doing anything illegal.

The only alternative?

Work under the table for Wenzhou as nannies and domestic help. Where they are paid peanuts (600-900 euros a month), work around the clock, and are treated like shit.

Sex work is often a choice, however constrained it may be by residence status and debt. It is important to distinguish between victims of trafficking and clients of smugglers: women arrive with significant debts, but they have voluntarily contacted their smuggler and have become indebted to their relatives rather than to him. Unlike migrant women of certain nationalities, they have not been trafficked or at least do not recognise themselves in this sometimes-vague category. It should also be noted that most of them work without intermediaries and are not exploited. Finally, despite the difficulty of an activity that is often violent and highly stigmatised, many explain this choice pragmatically, as it allows some to earn more money and pay off their debts more quickly, but also to regain their independence compared to the working conditions in the Chinese families that hire them.

Source: Hélène Le Bail 

A tree, a truck, a trade.

Three exhibitions of resilience and resistance, unconnected except by the space they share.

I will refrain from my usual solicitations and leave you instead with this image of a section of a stained-glass window in Chartres Cathedral. It shows two courtesans inviting the prodigal son into their house. Eleven of the window’s 30 sections show similar scenes from the sex trade. The entire window, which is best seen in late afternoon light, was commissioned in the early 13th century. By a guild of prostitutes.

Perhaps one day, this year or next, the busiki will drive home and stay. And with them, the homesick men and women who crave the comforts they bring. The heaven-trees, however, aren’t going anywhere. Nor are the women who walk past them. May the new year bring them, and you, dear reader, health and happiness.