The streets around the Seine have gone silent: restaurants are almost empty; there are only a few people walking along the footpaths; bike traffic is practically non-existent; the odd car and motorcycle goes through, still stopping at red lights, even though the way’s clear. This is the ‘grey zone’, a restricted area set up by the Paris préfecture to secure the river before the Olympic Games opening ceremony today.
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The police seemed unprepared for the spontaneous protest. At sunset, protesters moved barriers from elsewhere in the square and built a barricade around the assembled police, who had brought a van equipped with water cannon. Bonfires were lit between the barricade and the obelisk, on the site where the guillotine once stood. ‘We decapitated Louis XVI,’ the crowd chanted, ‘we can do it again, Macron!’
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Lo’s Noodle Factory supplies almost all the Chinatown restaurants, as well as the Hakkasan group; no one was cutting noodles when I went there on a Friday afternoon. ‘It’s not just Chinatown. It’s anywhere where there are Chinese people. France, Italy – it doesn’t matter; it’s the whole world,’ said the man handing me my order of char siu bao, red bean buns and cheung fun. Lo’s only just avoided closing last November, when Shaftesbury plc (which owns most of Chinatown) tried to turn it into an electrical substation. The whole area was already under pressure from skyrocketing rents and immigration enforcement raids. The novel coronavirus has further stymied Chinatown’s micro-economy.