Working life...(25/10)

Is my work interesting? It is something imaginative, promotional, always positive, always about people, place, meeting place, a confluence of information and dissemination, an art about understanding and imagination again. This should be the nature of the work, but execution is always something very fatigue and varied...I am working at an enormous alimentation trade fair this week, and in a day, I met people of different kinds...the manager of the top farmhouse of live poultry in France who looks for export in Asia, a wholesaler from Oslo searching sources of fresh vegetable from China and Hong Kong, a German specialising in sterilisation of food processing. Some traders from Chile look for information of Hong Kong in Paris...the specialist of mushroom examines the blossoming of mushrooms, another one work on peanuts. I learn about the origin of the Chinese chestnut from Zhenghua, which poses a different life form of the chataignier on Champs Elysees. Farming industry, a collage of alimentation and science - human innocence - it is a reflective recognition of mankind and culture. The trains were jammed with visitors and businessmen, a cozy environment to practise intimacy. Adaptation, exchange - it was the intangible mobile network of networking. Met an Italian from Naples, we talked about Pompeii. There was a strolling flash back of time and age. Life is to gather people into the showcase for their own show. A beloved one composes of pieces, before the scattered edges fade and decompose. Light a magnifying glass with lilac flame, we see the inside of the whole.

I went to Rungis early in the morning. It is another world that co-exists with dreams and midnight tales. This world inverts the handles on the clock in time, a midnight business, and simply framed with its scale, it exists and it subsists with its unlimited boundary. It forms a 12,000-employed micro-economy. All related, and all interacted, simply like a hair salon that serves the owl population. The food Rungis handled composes of 70% of total products in France, a feeding for 80 millions people. Divided into numerous pavilions, the fresh market demonstrates a modern logistic system in orders and procedures. Sometimes, we live somewhere too far away from the reality. That is the reason why we can still sense the distance, hopefully. I like a lot the greenhouse cafe located at the centre of the poultry pavilion. It is the grand place of the workers, and it is a live showroom of happy hours. Six is not only late but too late, and a day could only commence by this collective combination of resonance in the dawn prelude. Workers wear in white, and this is just an identity of being into it. This is a circle of a self-centred geometric scope. Love it or not.

I have my day and my weeks in examining.

Rungis, le Marché...(3/8)

This is another belated piece which I intended to record since last May. I had an occasion to attend a function near Malakoff and it was then I came across the place named Rungis...it did not bring me to special attention until I realised that the place actually plays an important role to Paris and Europe. Let's begin with some basic figures: a market with an area of 232 hectares and serving 18 millions consumers in Europe, out of which two-third is originated within a diameter of 120km from Paris; an annual sales of 7.1 billion euros in 2004; over 1.5 million tones of food products and 36.8 millions flower pots arrived in 2004...one starts to understand the significance of this world second biggest food and beverage wholesale market after the one in Chicago.

Serving the daily basic need of the citizens in a metropolitan, Paris had its scaleable food market since the early Middle Age, and with no surprise, the market was located at the Ile de la Cité, and then relocation of the market took place in response to the continual city development and the enlargement of a food market to cope with the increasing demand of food and beverage in town. It was therefore moved and planted at the site of the existing Hotel de Ville, and then the area near Rue des Petits Champs. After that, the Marché de Champeaux was set up in debut 13th century. The Marché de Champeaux, located at the present Saint Lazare area, was originally an outdoors wheat market. In 1181, the area was used to hold a ‘Saint Lazare Fair’ which gave way to its development as a central gathering area for food and beverage products. Some other consumer items were sold at the area too. The place became an old address of Les Halles after centuries.


The more Paris had been developed, the more complex and sizable the food market was developed and equipped, and the food market at the current Les Halles area gained its fame in the 19th century. The first ‘Pavillon des Halles’ of Les Halles was created under the order of Louis Napoleon in 1853 to develop giant marketplace for the Parisian. Because of the nature of construction where the building structure was made by stones, it was named ‘Fort des Halles’. This version was constructed by the architect named Victor Baltard, and a total of eight Pavilions were erected (in fact, Victor Baltard took part in numerous restoration projects in Paris at that moment including the restoration of Eglise de Saint Germain des-Pres).

A century later, Les Halles, the once-upon-a-time central food market in Paris, lost its attractiveness to consumers after the continual development of metro system and the decentralisation of the city. After all the mode of consumption altered and households could have their shopping in other decentralized small shops and bazaars which located closer to their home. The fresh meat market was detached from Les Halles and established at the area of La Villette. The French government began as well the construction project of 'marché d’intérêt national' in 1964 to delocate food market from centre Paris, and Rungis was chosen to be the new land of taste. It operates as a distribution hub for most of the alimentation products now. Unfortunately, a pass is required to enter the wholesale market and I still lack a chance to go inside the food carnival...people say that there are some good seafood restaurants in the area, and no doubt, I do not query on this.

A detailed history of the development of Rungis market can be found on http://www.rungisinternational.com/pages/fr/presentation/mar_hist.asp.