Chinese investors' itineraries in the vineyards of Bordeaux, or the reversal of the figure of the “foreigner”

This article examines the links being forged on a daily basis between French employees and Chinese investors in a territory located on the fringes of the Bordeaux region. It reveals how the marks of autochthony and foreignness, the fruits of economic and symbolic exchanges, are transformed within one of Bordeaux’s impoverished wine communities. This community has accepted—for some of its members—this unexpected foreign presence to (re)provide market and symbolic value to its wine, while at the same time fearing that these Chinese investors will definitively take over a jewel of the French economy and/or worse disappear without a trace.