A THIRD-WORLD REVOLUTIONARIES' TRAINING GROUND

FOREIGN WORKERS LIVED IN THIS CHEAPEST OF NEIGHBORHOODS, ON THE TUMULTUOUS LATIN QUARTER'S EDGE

Zoom

"Chou En Lai lived in this building during his stay in France from 1922 to 1924"

Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, who both worked at Renault,

shared a 10-meter room minutes from Cité Jeanne d'Arc.

Zoom

Zoom

Chou would help Deng become "the architect of modern China" (initiator of Chinese state capitalism) after the death of Mao Zedong (in 1976).

They may have crossed paths with Ho Chi Minh, who did odd jobs while writing/illustrating/publishing a Vietnamese political paper and who lived for a time near place d'Italie, the roundabout at the end of the street:

Later Aimé Césaire, poet of the Négritude movement and Communist deputy from Martinique, would live two streets away.

Zoom (© Assemblée nationale)

24 rue Albert Bayet

 Those plaques alone recall the tie 

between the neighborhood and the storms to come.

End of this section.

*     *     * 

Next section,
IV.4.3.
A past that is forgotten yet indelible