A major sociological shift is underway in Paris as the traditional "bar-tabacs" -- the cafe-cum-cigarette shops that have formed part of the city's identity for generations -- are being bought up by French Chinese.
According to the Tobacconists' Union, around a quarter of the capital's bar-tabacs are now run by Chinese owners as the original proprietors move out of what they see as an increasingly unprofitable business.
"At least 50 percent of sales of bar-tabacs over the last year have been to French nationals of Chinese origin," union president Gerard Bohelay says.
Since the 1970s French Chinese have been a major presence in the 13th arrondissement in the southeast of the capital, but now entrepreneurs are moving out of so-called "Chinatown" into new neighborhoods.
"It used to be people from Auvergne [in central France] or Brittany who came up to Paris to open bistros. Now it is increasingly the Chinese who are taking over these family businesses. The customers cannot see any difference," Bohelay says.
In a bar-tabac on the boulevard Port-Royal in the Montparnasse quarter, young Chinese staff serve a group of middle-aged clients with beers and the traditional Parisian croque-monsieur (toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich). In a corner, owner Hugo Jin takes charge of cigarette and lottery ticket sales.
"I used to be the owner of a Chinese restaurant. But the competition was too strong, I couldn't make ends meet. With bar-tabacs at least there are trading rules. Prices are regulated," says Jin, who took over the cafe in 2001.
"Things could be better here, but we are managing. I am doing it for my children who are aged one and two. I don't want them to have to do what I am doing. It's not a career. I have to work 13 hours a day," he says.
At a nearby bistro -- the Verre a Pied -- the owner Claude Derrien says he can "understand perfectly well why the French are selling up to the Chinese."
"I have had this bistro for 22 years and my profits have been going down constantly," he says. "Mainly it's because cigarette sales are falling, but there are also all these cheap restaurants that are springing up like mushrooms."
"The Chinese who buy up the bar-tabacs put a lot of money into video games, lottery sales and so on. Whether we like it or not, that is the way things are going. The traditional bistro that we used to love may not be here for long," he says.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
RSS