I started noticing them two years ago, in the summer of 2009. They stood in groups of two or three along the promenade of the Boulevard de la Villette at night; Chinese women of indeterminate age dressed like schoolmarms – skirts below the knee, bulky sweaters, occasionally stockings with a lace pattern, the only sartorial clue as to their true business. Belleville has a bustling Asian population and it’s not unusual to see Chinese families sitting on benches along the promenade, even till late at night. But there was something else going on here. These women stood in their ugly clothes with an eye on passersby. They were on the prowl – that was clear enough – but I couldn’t quite understand how they were managing. Admittedly I know nothing about prostitutes, but I thought that this business required a bit of indecent dressing to bait clientele. Then the obvious dawned on me: whorish get-ups also attract the police in a République which has outlawed this line of labor. The Belleville hookers looked miserable, like they had just been flown in from some backward province, wardrobed in a rush at the Salvation Army before being hustled onto the boulevard to do some heavily discounted tricks.
Since the summer of 2009 these so-called ladies of the night have started working in broad daylight, and their numbers have quadrupled. Walking down the boulevard from Colonel Fabien to Belleville, which I do at least twice daily, I’ve seen up to thirty or forty as early as eleven in the morning. They seem to be everywhere, an ominous reminder of the world’s sexual misery and the vulnerability of women.
According to various sources, these women hail from Dongbei in the North of China. Here, the factories which flourished during the Maoist era have closed down, leaving a huge population of women jobless and disenfranchised. How the Dongbei are lured to Paris and under what conditions remain a mystery to me, but the only way out of prostitution, at least as they see it, is to find a French husband. Few, I suspect, do. I’ve recently read in a Le Monde article that the Dongbei immigrants lodge in apartments, sometimes twenty to a small flat and pay around 120 euros a month for the bed. The landlords, or rather bedlords, are predominantly Wenzhou, a population that has been settled in Paris since the 80s. There are also designated flats where the Dongbei dames take their clients; I know this because a good friend of mine lived next to one and finally had to call the landlord about the constant comings and goings. Her neighbor, a Chinese man, had rented to a compatriot who, unbeknownst to him, was making a pretty profit subletting to the Marcheuses de Belleville. The call put an end to the commerce in that particular flat; but as it is in the nature of commerce to move around, the girls relocated to flats where the neighbors were willing to turn the blind eye.
Prostitution along the Boulevard de la Villette is not, I’ve discovered, a new phenomenon. Police records from the late 19th century divided the boulevard’s sex workers into two categories: “Les Soumises” and “Les Insoumises” or to translate literally, “The Subdued” and the “The Non-subdued” (in the first instance, prostitutes working under the auspices of a pimp, and in the second, whores working solo.) I witness prostitution daily and cannot pretend it doesn’t affect me. It is not just une affaire des chinois as some pretend; it is a problem that disturbs all of us profoundly, whether we care to register its violence or not. Walking down the boulevard one afternoon my son asked: “Mom, why is that grown up lady licking a lollypop.” He’s only eight and an Innocent, but he sensed something wasn’t right. I can’t remember my response, but I think I said something about her getting cavities. Really, I don’t want my child to have to see this, but our quotidian tasks put us face to face with this unsavory reality. I can’t imagine the Chinese mothers walking their children down the boulevard feel any differently. Don’t get me wrong; the real problem is not the witnessing, it is the prostitution itself. These women need help. The question remains as to how we can help them find their way to a better life, particularly given the government’s hard line on immigration, which makes obtaining a residency card, hence legal employment, nigh impossible. A couple of years ago, the immigration police raided a building on the Boulevard de la Villette, known to house Chinese immigrants. One woman jumped out the window to escape, thinking the awning of the store below would buffer her fall. It didn’t. She fell straight through it to her death.
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. That’s a noble but tall order. Let’s not sell it short.