During the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, the Yuanmingyuan began to be built, after decades of spending hundreds of millions of taels of silver, it was finally completed, and after Yongzheng ascended the throne, the Yuanmingyuan was expanded, and the successive emperors of the Qing Dynasty have been building the Yuanmingyuan continuously, which is known as the Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens, which is the favorite residence and recuperation base of the Rulers of the Qing Dynasty, which has countless rare treasures and rare animals, but unfortunately all this was burned down in 1860.
After the British and French troops invaded the Forbidden City, all the treasures in the Yuanmingyuan were looted, and then the British army set fire to the Yuanmingyuan, resulting in the entire garden being reduced to ruins, when a British reporter took photos of the Yuanmingyuan before it was burned, these photos truly showed the beauty of the Yuanmingyuan this garden treasure, in 1873, at the British Forbes Auction, starting at 200,000 pounds, equivalent to 1.7 million yuan.
Yuanmingyuan is composed of Yuanmingyuan, Changchun Garden and Wanchun Garden, in order to build this garden, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty invited the best craftsmen in the country, and the most distinctive buildings from all over the country and even the whole world were copied in the Yuanmingyuan, and the photos before the burning of the Yuanmingyuan, we can also see that the Yuanmingyuan is indeed like a fairyland on earth, no wonder the emperors of the late Qing Dynasty abandoned the Forbidden City and lived in the Yuanmingyuan for almost a year and a half.
From these photos, we may be able to glimpse the true appearance of the Yuanmingyuan, but how beautiful it once was, can only exist in our imagination, as a royal garden, the Yuanmingyuan from the date of completion of the construction, the common people have no right to enter, so the scene inside the Yuanmingyuan can only exist in the historical books, these photos before the burning can only let us know part of the Yuanmingyuan, can only say that the past can be turned into a memory.