In 1860, 2 robbers walked into the Yuanmingyuan hand in hand, they frantically plundered everything here, and finally filled their pockets, stuffed with boxes, and before leaving, they did not forget to put a fire, burn the treasures they could not take away, burned more than 300 Chinese craftsmen, eunuchs, and palace women who did not escape, and then left here arm in arm with a smile, returning to Europe, the names of the two robbers were English and France.
In 1900, 8 robbers walked into the Yuanmingyuan again hand in hand, and because the most valuable things had been snatched away by the previous 2 robbers, the unwilling new robbers cut down the exquisite pillars, sawed off the stakes of the wooden bridge, cut off the gems on it, removed the white jade materials, and used the Yuanmingyuan as a giant building material field.
After experiencing fire, wood and stone robbery, the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens", which covers an area of 3.5 million square meters and a construction area of 200,000 square meters, has completely turned into a ruin and is completely unrecognizable. According to incomplete statistics, more than 1.5 million cultural relics were looted in the Yuanmingyuan, including a large number of rare treasures from the pre-Qin to the Qing Dynasty. The ruined Yuanmingyuan has become a constant reminder of our national shame and an ironclad proof that foreign invaders have committed heinous crimes.
Since 1996, the mainland has carried out three large-scale archaeological work on the Yuanmingyuan site, but only 50,000 square meters of excavations have been excavated in decades of efforts, but in this 50,000 square meters of sites, we have excavated more than 50,000 pieces (pieces) of precious cultural relics, including various gold, jade, porcelain (and fragments), etc., of which 106 cultural relics that were preemptively restored were first displayed to the public in 2017.
Among the 106 displayed cultural relics, the most attractive is the "copper gilded elephant head", which was an accidental discovery by the archaeologists, saying that at that time, everyone was cleaning up the silt of the Omiyamon River, and suddenly a member was hit by an incomparably hard "mud lump", and he felt that this "mud lump" was not simple, so he sent it to the laboratory for cleaning.
Facts have proved that he did not read wrong, after more than 10 days of cleaning, the "mud lump" revealed the "true appearance" - it is an elephant head, on which are finely carved out elephant eyes, ivory, elephant trunk, large ears, the line is very smooth, the overall shape is incomparably exquisite, at a glance, the elephant seems to be smiling, and the posture is lovely.
According to the Yuanmingyuan archaeological team, this bronze gilded elephant head should be part of a certain artifact (such as a ding, furnace), and on the way away by the robbers, the elephant head accidentally fell into the river, and was fortunate enough to be preserved and found by everyone. At the same time, experts introduced that gilding is a particularly complex process, the requirements for craftsmen are extremely high, and the cost is huge, it is no exaggeration to say that this small copper gilded elephant head, the production process is far above the famous "Yuanmingyuan Zodiac Beast Head Bronze Statue".
There is also a very important cultural relic, which is a yellow glazed glass component excavated from the underground of the Western-style building bird cage, and the four characters of "Peacock Arch" are written on it. Before its appearance, experts could not determine what kind of "bird" the "bird cage" was, and the excavation of the "Peacock Arch" proved that it was a peacock here, filling the gap in the data.
This year marks the 160th anniversary of the destruction of the Old Summer Palace, and we have not been able to recover the precious artifacts that were looted, when The Times wrote: "It is estimated that the total value of looted and destroyed property is more than 6 million pounds." "(About 54 million yuan) In fact, these cultural relics that have been looted and destroyed cannot be measured by money at all, and what they destroy is an integral part of the entire history of human civilization, which is the eternal regret of all mankind!