Out of a workshop window, Mr. Zhou falls through the sky onto the pavement of a Paris neighbourhood, Belleville. While in Paris to find Gine, his wife who has disappeared, he meets Liwei, a Chinese man nicknamed “The Croat”, who arrived illegally from Croatia with his younger brother. Together they search for Gine, helped by a prostitute called Anna and the Poke-mons, a band of manga-looking youths who bring them pictures found on the Internet. As they all search for her, Gine’s ghost mysteriously wan-ders around Belleville. In order to survive, Zhou and The Croat become the district’s “ear clippers” until Zhou withdraws into solitude when he finds out about his wife’s tragic end, and The Croat leaves to discover China, “the country of the future that Europeans dream so much about”.
