In 1860, Britain's High Commissioner to China, Lord Elgin, ordered troops to destroy both the Summer Palace and Old Summer Palace to avenge the killing of several British envoys to Beijing. By striking sites of cultural and imperial significance, Elgin wanted to chasten China.
But with the Old Summer Palace still in ruins, he instead created a shrine that, more than a century on, is used by the country's leadership to remind its people of past foreign aggression. Each year, tens of thousands of visitors arrive to see its broken pillars and stone bricks, which dot an unkempt landscape of grass and weeds. They are potent symbols of China's "century of humiliation," the term Beijing uses to describe the period from the start of the Opium War in 1839 to the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.
But with the Old Summer Palace still in ruins, he instead created a shrine that, more than a century on, is used by the country's leadership to remind its people of past foreign aggression. Each year, tens of thousands of visitors arrive to see its broken pillars and stone bricks, which dot an unkempt landscape of grass and weeds. They are potent symbols of China's "century of humiliation," the term Beijing uses to describe the period from the start of the Opium War in 1839 to the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.
