A few days later, and the centre of the broad Boulevard de Belleville is transformed into the monthly Food Market, normally a festival of global street food but, to honour the new lunar year, now filled with stalls run by Chinese restaurants from across the French capital.

Long queues form of people wanting to try everything from stir-fried beef noodles to spicy Sichuan grilled squid, festive glutinous rice zongzi (sticky rice dumpling) and nian gao (sweet rice cake) to something perhaps reassuring for the less-adventurous French, a juicy “burger chinois” (complete with Lao Gan Ma chilli sauce, Sichuan pepper and sweet-and-sour barbecue sauce).

Red lanterns bob above the stalls and halfway through the evening the lion dancers make a triumphant return, dazzling diners with their acrobatics.

Austrian capital Vienna touts ‘life-seeing’ tourism for wealthy visitors

Long before Chinatown put down roots here in the 1980s, Belleville was an intriguing, proudly independent and offbeat neighbourhood. Originally a village surrounded by vineyards perched on the side of a hill above Paris, Belleville was incorporated into the capital in 1860, as part of Baron Haussmann’s revolutionary makeover of the city.

Workers were attracted by the Industrial Revolution’s new factories, workshops and warehouses, while cabarets and cafes blossomed to entertain the new arrivals.

And that side of life has remained unchanged, as Belleville buzzes at night, be it in transformed 19th century industrial spaces such as La Bellevilloise and La Maison des Métallos, now vibrant cultural hubs showcasing art, music and theatre, or the ornate art deco theatres Le Zèbre de Belleville and La Java, presenting avant-garde circus, stand-up comedy or late-night clubbing.

A multiethnic neighbourhood dubbed by some as Rebelville or Babelville, “Belleville is above all tolerant and welcoming to outsiders, a historic working-class neighbourhood that has always attracted immigrants; Eastern Europeans from Armenia and Poland, North African Sephardic Jews, Maghreb Muslims from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, and, since the 1980s, a wave of Chinese economic migrants primarily from Zhejiang province”, says Tamara Lui, who came to Paris from Hong Kong as a student in 1988, and ended up making her home in the French capital.

“They have created what I call a Chinese Chinatown, a very different character from the city’s older Chinatown, in the 13th arrondissement [Les Olympiades is, in fact, Europe’s largest Chinatown], which grew with Chinese Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians fleeing the Vietnam war and Khmer Rouge,” says Lui.

Lui worked in Paris as a journalist for Sing Tao Daily and Phoenix TV, and is president of Chinois de France, a voluntary association based in Belleville that helps immigrants navigate the labyrinth of French bureaucracy, older people with medical visits, and schoolchildren with parents who are too busy running their restaurants, with their homework.

“The first Chinese restaurant opened in Belleville in 1983 – Le Pacifique, still owned by the same family – while the neighbourhood has since mushroomed into the heart of Asian dining out in Paris, drastically changing Belleville, because a new generation of young French people are falling in love with Chinese cuisine, which is convivial and inexpensive, where everyone eats together, sharing dishes.

“All the exact opposite of dining out in a classic French restaurant.

“Just look at the crowds queuing to eat at cheap and cheerful locales like La Cantine Chinoise, which serves generous bowls of Wenzhou gaifan, and the hole-in-the-wall diner La Tour de Belleville, a favourite for fragrant soups with hand-spun noodles.”

It is this dynamic that convinced Yup Zhao, from Qingdao, Shandong province, and her Tibetan husband, Gyal Nam, to open their own restaurant, Bises Nouilles, a few months ago.

“We chose Belleville because there is a genuine mix of Chinese, French locals and tourists from around the world, which we thought was perfect for the new kind of cuisine we wanted to present,” says Zhao. “Also we are surrounded by excellent Chinese supermarkets where we can easily get all the freshest ingredients.

“Gyal created the dishes on the menu, trained a chef to cook Tibetan cuisine – like a marmite [an earthenware cooking pot] of potato noodles – and already 50 per cent of our customers are young French who love our noodles, ravioli and grilled skewers. They are adventurous foodies and ready to discover our spicy cuisine, but also the soothing aromas of our signature flower tea.”

With the Paris Olympics fast approaching, the city is gearing up for an influx of visitors, and Belleville is an obvious attraction for curious, adventurous and passionate foodies.

The neighbourhood is 4km from La Place de la Concorde – where the Olympic basketball, cycling and skateboarding events will take place – and a 15-minute walk from the tombs of singers Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison, and playwright Oscar Wilde, in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, one of the city’s most visited sites.

During the day, Belleville may lack the classic attractions of art museums and haute-couture shopping, but it compensates with some fun alternatives.

The Musée Edith Piaf in the 11th arrondissement is a hidden gem, her tiny apartment filled with fabulous memorabilia of the “La Vie en Rose” chanteuse, though organising a visit resembles an escape-room adventure, with the address and door codes revealed only after a secretive phone call to make a reservation.

Curator Bernard Marchois is friendly and full of fascinating anecdotes, but sadly for Instagrammers, he insists that no photography is allowed.

Belleville also possesses the biggest open-air gallery for street art in Paris. Rue Denoyez was once a murky, no-go alleyway but is now packed every night with party-goers crowding hip vegan canteens and natural-wine and craft-beer bars. The walls and shop fronts are covered with psychedelic graffiti that is constantly updated by street artists drawn here from all over Europe.

And then there is Le Belvédère de Belleville, a panoramic lookout over Paris atop the neighbourhood’s verdant park, decorated with murals, mosaics and poetry. The view is as spectacular as that from the better known Sacré-Cœur, on the other side of town, in Montmartre, but is without the crowds of tourists and pestering souvenir sellers.

As the sun goes down and the neon signs of Chinatown’s restaurants light up, Belleville really comes to life.

Many visitors start off with an aperitif on the packed terrace of legendary watering hole Aux Folies, little changed from the days when it was a cabaret bar in which Piaf regularly performed.

Some of those visitors then grab a table at the family-run Ravioli Nord Est for a feast of steamed or grilled jiaozi dumplings, kelp soup and piquant squid salad. Before heading to La Vie Devant Soi, an organic wine bar and jazz cellar run by Yves Vuong, a Chinese Vietnamese who says he chose to open in Belleville, “because the clientele is a perfect melting pot of neighbourhood artists and musicians, the Chinese community and more and more inquisitive tourists”.

The latest nightlife hotspot to open is hip cocktail bar Kissproof. Lebanese owner Micky Abou Merhi explains that, “when I decided to open a Kissproof in Paris I thought about the Latin Quarter or Marais, but fortunately discovered and fell in love with cutting-edge Belleville.

“The funky clientele here are just the same as I have in Kissproof Beirut and they all love my arak and absinthe cocktails.”

For those who end up missing the last Metro train, there are now some decent hotel options in Belleville. The cool, contemporary Novotel Belleville, for instance, and Les Piaules, a funky hostel for budget travellers.

The latest to join the fray is designer boutique bolt-hole Babel, named in honour of this new, cosmopolitan, multilingual Belleville.