Heritage endures when the past keeps moving forward

Writing ordinary lives into history

Can migration itself become a museum? When France created its National Museum of the History of Immigration, this was one of the questions we had to confront.

Our museum is housed in the Palais de la Porte Dorée, a historical building that was originally built for an international exhibition.

Today, the building has become a new cultural heritage site, while the museum inside tells another essential part of France's history: the history of immigration.

France is a country shaped by migration. If we want to understand French society, we must recognize that immigration is part of our fundamental history. But how do we preserve a history that is not always made up of famous people, great works of art or monumental buildings? Our answer has been to collect the lives of ordinary people.

Some of our most meaningful objects would never have been considered museum treasures in the traditional sense. One is a sleeping bag once used by an immigrant when he first arrived in France. Today, we treasure it as much as any celebrated work of art, because it carries the memory of a life.

We also have a Chinese bride's dress and a cloak donated by a Vietnamese immigrant woman. She told me the cloak was one of the most important things in her life — something passed down from her ancestors that she now wanted to pass on to the next generation.

These objects connect great history with private history.

They remind us that a nation's heritage is not made only by its most famous figures.

This is also what art and museums can do: help us understand the "other" by allowing us to feel something of another person's life. Stories make distant lives personal.

That is why cultural exchange between China and France matters. It is not simply about displaying one civilization to another.

It is about preserving different memories, sharing them across borders and learning to see our common human experience through the stories of others.

A museum does more than preserve objects. It helps decide whose memories will become part of history.

Constance Rivière is the general director of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, which houses the National Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris, France.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.