Silent despair and sadness
Li Hongzhang was an important minister of the Qing Empire, but after his visit to the United States, he fell into despair, and after returning to China, he was silent, and died peacefully soon after. This visit to the United States made him realize the backwardness of the Great Qing Dynasty and saw the modernization and national strength of the United States, which made him feel terribly uneasy about the future of the Great Qing Dynasty.
In 1896, after being ordered to attend the coronation ceremony of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Li Hongzhang decided to visit the United States by the way. He traveled 90,000 kilometers for six months on a cruise ship before arriving in New York on August 26. It was the first time he set foot on American soil, and the last time in his life that he stepped into a foreign land. The then President of the United States, Cleveland, personally greeted Li Hongzhang and treated him with respect.
However, when Li Hongzhang saw the modern New York streets, busy traffic, and high-rise buildings in front of him, his heart was filled with endless sadness and sadness. Li Hongzhang is dressed in the official costume of the Qing Dynasty, and in the modern United States, he feels like he has traveled through time and space. He realized that the Qing Dynasty was simply not capable of such modernization, and even the Tsarist Russia, which he had visited, did not have such spectacular architecture. After entering the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Li Hongzhang was even more surprised, he saw that advanced elevators had already been installed in high-rise buildings in the United States, as if everything was beyond his imagination. Sitting in the elevator, he was over seventy years old and felt powerless
Li Hongzhang devoted his life to the Westernization Movement, hoping that the Qing Dynasty would catch up with the pace of Western countries. However, this trip to the United States made him realize that the efforts of the Qing Dynasty were like a joke. The Qing Dynasty has closed the country for a hundred years, and the world has already undergone earth-shaking changes. At that time, the Empress Dowager Cixi was still amazed by the shape of the car, but she did not know that the London Underground had been running for 38 years, Nokia had been established in Finland, and the world-renowned university Harvard University already existed. After the defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War, Li Hongzhang's Westernization Movement was defeated by Japan. Therefore, at the age of 73, he personally went to Europe and the United States to investigate, and this inspection made him thoroughly realize the backwardness of the Qing Dynasty and the fact that he could not revitalize the Qing Dynasty alone
After returning to China, Li Hongzhang was often gloomy, unwilling and desperate. He died less than five years later. His visit to the United States made him see the weakness of the Qing Dynasty and made him deeply doubt the future of the Qing Empire.