In December 1920 a French packet ship, the "André Lyon", sailed into Marseille with 210 Chinese students aboard including Deng. The sixteen-year-old Deng briefly attended middle schools in Bayeux and Châtillon, but he spent most of his time in France working. His first job was as a fitter at the Le Creusot Iron and Steel Plant in La Garenne-Colombes, a south-western suburb of Paris where he moved in April 1921. Coincidentally, when Deng's later political fortunes were down and he was sent to work in a tractor factory in 1924 he found himself a fitter again and proved to still be a master of the skill.