People wearing masks are seen at the Montparnasse train station in Paris, France, March 19, 2020. (Photo by Aurelien Morissard/Xinhua)

"We, the Chinese living in France, have two homes -- when China was in distress, we were all with Wuhan; now as the disaster falls upon France, we are all Parisians," said the Association of Chinese Residents in France in an open letter widely reposted by WeChat users over the weekend.

"Join the French people in this combat. Let's pull through the darkest time together," said the open letter, urging some 700,000 Chinese living in their second homeland to collect protective gears and donate them to the frontline health workers.

Days before the release of this open letter, "Chinese Parisians" originated from Wenzhou, a city in southeastern China known for its large number of emigrants with the reputation of being entrepreneurial as they succeed in restaurants, retail and wholesale businesses in their adopted countries, have already taken actions on their own accord.

In Belleville in Paris and Aubervillers on the outskirts of the capital, two areas being home to numerous Asian shops, they distributed face masks to passers-by and shared their small stock of this precious protective gear much needed by people affected by the virus.

Vehicles are seen on the Paris ring-road in Paris, France, March 19, 2020. (Photo by Aurelien Morissard/Xinhua)

Face masks are a common sight across East Asia. Many Chinese are used to having some pieces of masks in reserve. Like many in East Asian countries, they share the common practice of wearing face masks in public, especially during the winter months. With this barrier, a social courtesy widely accepted in Asian culture, people with coughs or cold symptoms seek to avoid passing their droplets onto others while healthy people look to prevent the onset of illness.

A Chinese student in Clemont-Ferrant in central-south France told Xinhua that he had returned 15 face masks to a nearby pharmacy, where he bought them in January when no prescription was needed for the purchase.

He did not use a single piece in the past weeks as local health experts strongly advised against healthy people wearing masks. "I did not want to attract attention. Others would find me 'bizarre' (if I wore a mask)," said the young man.

"Now I stay home almost all the time, just like all other people here. There is no need of those masks any more," he said. "The pharmacy will send them to hospitals or give them to patients. They need masks more than I do."

What he did was answering the call of the French government call to all citizens. With over 15,000 infection cases confirmed, health workers in the country are in dire need of protective gears. Official figures showed that some 24 million masks are needed per week but the country only has a "state stock" of 86 million pieces.

A policeman checks a car on the Champs-Elysees Avenue in Paris, France, March 17, 2020. (Photo by Aurelien Morissard/Xinhua)

Chinese associations and enterprises also took actions. On Monday, the alumina association of Wuhan University, together with EDAM Paris, a private school for higher education, brought 16,000 face masks to SAMU, France's pre-hospital medical emergency body.

On Wednesday, the Paris branch of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) donated 40,000 N95 respirator masks to Hopital Pitie-Salpetriere in Paris, one of the 157 hospitals designated by the French government to receive COVID-19 patients.

On Friday, a Chinese association in Seine-Saint-Denis, a region to the north of Paris, donated masks to Hopital Beaujoin located in their area, which was home to a large community of immigrants.

More and more Chinese are expected to join the fight against the virus and make their contributions to Europe's war against the pandemic, commented Nouvelle d'Europe, a Paris-based daily paper run by and for the Chinese diaspora, in its Saturday editorial.

"When our motherland suffers, overseas Chinese rush to the rescue. When our second homeland is enduring a hard time, we will also shoulder our responsibilities," read the editorial.

People do morning exercises next to the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in Paris, France, March 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)