Instrumentation
Sinfonietta (1111/1111/3/hp/pn db. cel/strings + 1 narrator)
Duration
10 minutes
Year Composed
2024
Commissioned By
Indiana University New Music Ensemble
“One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned.”
— Victor Hugo’s 1861 letter in response to the Burning and looting of Yuan Ming Yuan
The story of the burning and looting of Yuan Ming Yuan is well known in China. It was one of the most shameful moments in Chinese history and many Chinese still feel the pain and indignity of losing such a historical and cultural treasure. Yuan Ming Yuan, also known as The Old Summer Palace, was first built by the third emperor of the Chinese Qing dynasty, Kang Xi in 1707 as a private retreat near the Forbidden City and yet outside city limits. The palace kept expanding as later emperors continuously added pavilions, buildings, and visitas according to their own aesthetics and visions. By the 1750s, it had been expanded to 3.5 square kilometers (860 acres), almost five times the size of the Forbidden City grounds and eight times the size of the Vatican City. There were 4 gardens in total: The Garden of Perfect Brightness (圆明园), The Garden of Eternal Spring (长春园), The Garden of Elegant Spring (绮春园), and The European Garden (西洋楼). The Old Summer Palace was home to countless collections of architecture, gardens, art collections, and historic treasures. Robert McGee, chaplain to the British forces that later invaded the palace, described it as "arguably the greatest concentration of historic treasures in the world, dating and representing a full 5,000 years of an ancient civilization."
In 1860, during the Second Opium War, the British and French sent their armies to force Chinese imperial rulers to open up their country further to Western trade and influence. After 19 western delegates were taken hostage, tortured, and killed by Qing generals, Lord Elgin, in command of the British army, ordered the deconstruction of Yuan Ming Yuan. The western world had long been tantalized by The Old Summer Palace, and all they needed was an excuse to initiate the invasion. What happened next shook the entire world: the soldiers looted the entire palace, freely taking whatever they saw, and destroying whatever they could not carry. Many such treasures dated back to the Shang, Zhou and Han dynasties and were up to 3,600 years old. Prior to the invasion, the emperor had fled the palace with all his governors and armies, and the palace was only occupied by civilians. With no weapons to defend themselves, all the palace’s residents were killed, including children and infants. Women were raped. To be sure that nothing was left behind, the armies were ordered to burn the palace down, which took three days and three nights.
I had the chance to visit the ruins of Yuan Ming Yuan in Beijing when I was 10. The only things left were the stone columns from the European Palace. Since all the other palaces were made of wood, they did not survive the fire. I could never forget what it felt like to be on the ground of what once was the Versailles of China, but now its former glory could only be seen in pictures, paintings, and digital reconstructions. Standing in front of the ruins, I felt like a part of the history of my culture was forcefully taken away from me.
Even today, many Chinese art pieces in European collections, both public and private, were taken by soldiers in 1860. Yet few westerners know about the looting and burning of Yuan Ming Yuan. To cover up this dark part of the history, British and French museums would list “The Elgin family” as the source of their Chinese artifacts, but purposefully avoid explaining how the Elgin family had acquired those items. The most symbolic stolen artifacts are the 12 animal bronze heads taken from the zodiac fountain in the European Palace. 7 of them had been bought with high prices (the highest being 8.9 million USD) at auctions and brought back to China. The whereabouts of five of the animals remain unknown—the dragon, snake, goat, rooster and dog.
The narrated text was drawn in part from Victor Hugo's letter, "The Sack of the Summer Palace to Captain Butler, Hauteville House, 25 November 1861," and in part written by Daixuan Ai, David Drettwan, and Gabriel Jenks. There was, in a corner of the world, a wonder of the world; this wonder was called Yuan Ming Yuan. Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze and porcelain, frame it with cedar wood, cover it with precious stones, drape it with silk; make it here a sanctuary, there a harem, elsewhere a citadel, put gods there, and monsters, varnish it, enamel it, gild it, paint it, have architects who are poets build the thousand and one dreams of the thousand and one nights, add gardens, basins, gushing water and foam, swans, ibis, peacocks, suppose in a word a sort of dazzling cavern of human fantasy. Having slaughtered the Jurchen tribes, the mighty Qing dynasty declared themselves the rightful rulers of all China. Thus they found millennia of cultural treasure as their prize. People spoke of the Parthenon in Greece, the pyramids in Egypt, the Coliseum in Rome, Notre-Dame in Paris, Yuan Ming Yuan in China. If people did not see it, they imagined it. It was a kind of tremendous unknown masterpiece, like a silhouette of the civilization of Asia. In the corner of this wonder, there was a European Garden, blending East with West: a Baroque Pagoda, a Chinese Versailles, designed by Jesuit Missionaries brought to China by the emperor Qian Long. In front of the Hai Yan palace in this garden, was the most prized treasure—the zodiac fountain. Twelve animals of bronze: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. They each would announce the hours in turn, not with bells or chimes, but with a shimmering geyser. And then one day, this wonder disappeared. Vengeful and greedy armies, British and French, marched into China, entering at the ports. Emboldened by their guns and cannons, they destroyed tens of thousands of Qing soldiers on horseback who carried only swords and spears. With nothing to stop them, they entered the capital Beijing, where stood the Palace Yuan Ming Yuan. The European soldiers were mesmerized by what they saw, unable to believe that such wonder could exist. They wanted to possess every piece of treasure. To claim and take all that could be taken, to destroy all that stood on the ground of Yuan Ming Yuan. So they looted, filling their sleeves and bags with gold and silver, smashing sculptures and vases that were too large to carry. They killed any innocent citizen in their path, and when only a few were left surviving, those few were made to haul the spoils out of the palace, after which they too were shot. The water of the zodiac fountain ran red with the blood of the blameless inhabitants of the palace. Each bronze animal was beheaded, their heads bagged in burlap to be borne away with the mountains of treasure that was enough to make armies rich. Wanting to obliterate anything and everything that could not be taken, the armies lit the entire palace and grounds on fire as they stormed away, laden with this dream of an empire. For three days and three nights the fire burned on, ruthless and mighty: red flames and black smoke. All that was left standing were the charred remains of columns from the European Garden, silent as druids, the sole surviving witness to these westerners’ crime—no longer a Chinese Versaille but instead an Qing StoneHenge. For a hundred years and more the ruins of Yuan Ming Yuan have stood. Columns like brittle bones jut out of the earth, a giant corpse’s ashes. Pieces of the wonder find their way back home now and again. Slowly, piecemeal, some shining still, others defaced or damaged. Some stare out from behind glass at curious and innocent faces which bear a remarkable resemblance to those French and British soldiers.