A few days ago, I met up with a French friend of Asian descent whom I had met in Hong Kong several years ago. We talked a lot about the differences between Chinese and Western cultures and about working in France.
She was born and raised in France, and her parents are from Laos. She studied marketing, went to London for graduate school, and then worked in London for several years before moving on to work in Hong Kong and Thailand. We have both been away from our respective hometowns for about ten years, and we were both once expats in Hong Kong. We also both love traveling, so we had plenty to talk about.
Later, we talked about the similarities between Hong Kong and London. I said that I go to London every summer because I feel that London is so much like Hong Kong; every time I visit, it feels a little like coming home. She is the only person who has ever understood what I meant. She said that certain parts of Central in particular feel as though they were copied directly from London, and that you can also see it in the details of London’s transport system.
What ultimately made her decide to leave France was an incident in which she encountered a group of people on the street who bullied and even physically attacked her. When the police later asked them why they had done it, they said it was because she was an Asian woman—small, weak, and seemingly easy to pick on. When she heard that explanation, she resolved to leave a country that made her feel so unsafe. Throughout her childhood and adulthood, she had also often heard people—both acquaintances and strangers—shout “ching chang chong” at her. Once, at a party, a friend of a friend learned that she was from Laos and actually said, “Oh, then you must be an easy girl.”
She said she had never experienced the kind of alienation caused by language that I had, but she did have an identity crisis. At home, she grew up with Lao culture, where sharing food was perfectly normal. At school, however, she had to follow French cultural norms, where people did not share their food. Later, when she went to work in Asia, she realized that many of her views were very French. As a result, whether she was in France or Asia, she never felt that she belonged.
What surprised me was that she said her experience of looking for work in Paris had also been extremely difficult. Either her résumé would not make it through the screening process, or she would fail the interview; in any case, not a single interview ever made it to the final stage. The only explanation she could think of was subtle discrimination. She did not include a photo, but her surname was obviously Asian.
She feels that French culture places great importance on a sense of superiority and on “appearing respectable,” but is less direct and pragmatic than English-speaking cultures. Many people live according to other people’s values.