The idiom of robbery on fire means to rob when someone is on fire. It can be said that the act of taking advantage of the fire and looting is despised by people. In history, the act of taking advantage of the fire and looting and making the country difficult to make money is not rare. Let's talk about the robbery of the Yuanmingyuan.
The Yuanmingyuan, a large-scale imperial garden of the Qing Dynasty, known as the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens", is a magnificent royal project built by the three emperors of the Qing Dynasty, Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, who spent more than 100 years to gather the strength of the whole country, and is the pearl of worldwide attention on this earth. The Yuanmingyuan was founded in 1709 (the 48th year of the Kangxi Dynasty), and the Kangxi Emperor gave the garden to the emperor's fourth son, Yin Chan. After Yongzheng ascended the throne, he expanded the original garden, and "avoided the noise and listened to the government" here in the summer. It is known as "the model of all gardening art" and is praised by the French writer Victor Hugo as "a model of ideals and art".
The Yuanmingyuan was doomed and burned twice.
On October 6, 1860, the Anglo-French coalition army defeated the elite Qing army led by Senggelinqin, and the Xianfeng Emperor heard the news of the disastrous defeat of the Qing army and immediately fled from the Yuanmingyuan. The Anglo-French forces stormed the Yuanmingyuan, looted them, and set them on fire. Some ordinary people in the capital actually took the initiative to act as guides for the invaders, aided and abetted the plundering of the Yuanmingyuan, and followed the British and French allies to take advantage of the fire and looting. Foreigners can not carry large utensils or discarded things, Chinese have a way to transport back to their homes.
In 1872 (the twelfth year of Tongzhi), Cixi and Tongzhi planned to restore the Yuanmingyuan, but they were abandoned due to insufficient financial resources. At this time, in addition to the surviving buildings, the Yuanmingyuan still retains a large number of precious flowers and trees, landscapes and stones, building sites, bridges, roads, garden walls and garden gates are mostly intact.
In 1900, when the Eight-Power Alliance invaded China, the Yuanmingyuan was burned down for the second time and suffered three disasters.
The first robbery: the wooden robbery. This time, the Eight-Nation Alliance did not grab any valuable treasures in the Yuanmingyuan, originally the Yuanmingyuan had no treasures to grab, but it was the biggest disaster for the Yuanmingyuan. The Eight-Nation Alliance had no choice but to build, they just liked it and couldn't move it back; for the defeated soldiers of the Qing Dynasty, You Yong and the bandits and hooligans, it was an opportunity to get rich. They tossed and turned desperately in the Yuanmingyuan, and many of the famous ancient trees, wooden bridges and wooden stakes in the building foundations in the park were all hijacked and transported to the nearby town of Qinghe for sale. At one time, the town of Qinghe was full of wood, and some people directly opened a charcoal factory in the Yuanmingyuan, and burned the trees that could not be transported out into charcoal and sold them, and the buildings and ancient trees in the Yuanmingyuan were completely destroyed. The surviving pillars, stakes, and trees of all sizes were deforested. Xu Shichang, who had been president of the Republic of China, demolished the wood belonging to the Mingchun Garden and the Jingchun Garden of the Yuanmingyuan.
The second robbery: the stone robbery. Some people like wood and some people like stone. Warlords and bureaucrats have their eyes on these things in the Yuanmingyuan. Stone does not need wood, it takes a lot of manpower and material resources to take away these overweight things, and the warlord has some power and has started. Cao Kun moved mountain stones and transported stones from the Yuanmingyuan in Baoding Xiu Garden. At present, the pair of Chinese watches at Peking University, the turning tail stone fish on the unnamed lake, the pair of Chinese watches at the entrance of the National Library, and the stone sculptures outside the East Palace gate of the Summer Palace are all from the Yuanmingyuan. In order to repair the road, the municipal government removed the wall of the Yuanmingyuan, and after it was withdrawn, it was smashed into pieces to pave the road, and the Yuanmingyuan was so large that the structure of the main building was so small that the roof tiles and stone strips were taken away. Wang Huaiqing, commander-in-chief of the Qi garrison, demolished the large wall of the Anyou Palace and the stone materials of the Western-style buildings in the garden, and Zhang Xueliang's Northeast Army did not lag behind and pulled away more than a dozen truckloads of exquisite stones to build a mausoleum for his father Zhang Zuolin.
The third robbery: the earth robbery. Precious trees and precious stones were taken away by powerful people. The Yuanmingyuan became a ruin that no one cared about. After 1917, farmers began to enter the Yuanmingyuan, where they began to plant rice, build houses, raise pigs, cattle and sheep, and the entire Yamagata water system of the Yuanmingyuan was destroyed. According to statistics in 1980, there were 7 production teams, more than 2,000 agricultural population, and nearly 20 settlements were stationed in the Yuanmingyuan. After the reform and opening up, more than 6,000 people entered the Yuanmingyuan. The Yuanmingyuan has chicken farms, duck factories, mushroom farms, tofu factories, as well as warehouses for construction companies and department stores. The western part of the Old Summer Palace has naturally become a garbage dump, and there are more than 200 graves.
In 2000, all the farmers living in the Yuanmingyuan moved out and stopped the destruction.