China during the Republic of China period was still backward. Due to the large population, many prime-age people were forcibly recruited by other countries and reduced to labor.
We have the impression that the fate of such laborers is full of misfortune, leaving their homes to do work that can never be completed, and being used as cattle by others.
Hundreds of thousands of Chinese men were "tricked" into working as laborers in France, marrying French women, and being hailed as heroes
However, a group of Chinese laborers were very lucky, tricked into working as laborers in France, waiting for them were millions of French women, and finally stayed in France, married and had children with French women, and finally were regarded as heroes by France.
Here's the thing:
China was originally a world-class power, a leading position in the international community, and few foreign invasions came to China.
However, due to the qing dynasty's closed country, it gave up the opportunity to communicate with the world, did not think of making progress, and was gradually overtaken by Western countries. As a result, in the subsequent Opium War and the Sino-Japanese War, it was defeated miserably, and a series of non-humiliating treaties were signed, and the land was cut off to compensate, and it became a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country.
Later, the Qing Dynasty was overthrown by Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries through the Xinhai Revolution, and the Republic of China was established, and yuan shikai established the Beiyang government after he became the president, and China was temporarily stable.
However, the long-term weakness will not be restored for a while and a half, and the Beiyang government is still oppressed by other countries.
In their eyes, although China is poor, it is better than having a large population and an abundant labor force. Under the pressure of these countries (Britain, France, Japan, etc.), they had to recruit labor for them.
Because everyone knows that these countries will certainly not give them a good job, they will work in the most painful and tired and dangerous mines. Therefore, when the Beiyang government recruits laborers, it basically adopts the method of coaxing and cheating, telling them that the work is easy, the treatment is good, and so on.
In 1916, groups of prime-age men were sent abroad by the Beiyang government to work, of which as many as 100,000 people went to France to work.
When these laborers first arrived in France, they were lucky enough to be assigned to work in factories, and those who were unlucky were naturally going to the mines to dig coal. At this time, they had realized that they had been deceived, but fortunately, the French treated the laborers as a good job, and gave a certain remuneration, although it was not very reasonable, but the people had to bow their heads under the eaves, and these laborers had to settle down.
After working like this for two years, the "happiness" of the laborers came.
After the First World War, although France was a victorious country, the domestic war losses were also very large, and millions of soldiers could never return, resulting in a serious imbalance in the proportion of men and women, and the shortage of male resources in France.
In order to speed up the recovery of the population, the government has set its sights on these hundreds of thousands of Chinese men, and the decline in population has led to a decline in demand, and the workload allocated to these laborers is naturally much less. Instead of leaving them idle, why not use them irrationally?
So with the tacit permission of the government, French women are not abandoned, in the case of "wolves with more meat and less meat", they began to compete for this group of men, and the high-quality men inside naturally became the target of crazy robbery.
Soon, these hundreds of thousands of Chinese laborers, except for those who were physically handicapped or who were bent on returning to China and did not want to stay in France, did not find a French wife, and the rest had a French wife.
And the rest of the people, the French government also opened the line and let them go home.
In this way, the selected men settled in France, contributing to the growth of the French population. These "lucky" laborers not only embraced the beauty of the people, but also were regarded as heroes by the French people.
In 1998, a memorial statue was erected in a Chinatown neighborhood in Paris, France, and there were two lines of words written in French and Chinese:
In memory of the Chinese laborers and fighters who died for France in World War I.