atomicskate - Shanghai…

Thanks to Diablotim, I’ve learnt something more about China.
He sent me an interesting letter from Victor Hugo. Then, I’ve made some quick research and added some more content here under, so I hope that he will learn additional things

In the past, I’ve heard about the sack of the Old Summer Palace, but I never realized that this place was different from the Summer Palace that you can visit nowadays.
Indeed, the Old Summer Palace, 圆明园 (Yuánmíng Yuán) is located on the East of the Summer Palace, 颐和园 (Yíhé Yuán).

The Old Summer Palace was a complex of palaces and gardens, built in the 18th and early 19th century, where the emperors of the Qing Dynasty resided and handled government affairs.
Known for its extensive collection of garden and building architectures and other works of art (a popular name in China was the "Garden of Gardens", 万园之园 - wàn yuán zhī yuán), the Imperial Gardens were destroyed by British and French troops in 1860, as a punishment for the torture and execution of those countries’ peace emissaries by the Chinese Emperor.
You will have plenty of info on the wiki dedicated webpage.

And thus, Victor Hugo wrote the following letter:

The sack of the Summer Palace

To Captain Butler

Hauteville House,

25 November, 1861

You ask my opinion, Sir, about the China expedition. You consider this expedition to be honourable and glorious, and you have the kindness to attach some consideration to my feelings; according to you, the China expedition, carried out jointly under the flags of Queen Victoria and the Emperor Napoleon, is a glory to be shared between France and England, and you wish to know how much approval I feel I can give to this English and French victory.

Since you wish to know my opinion, here it is:

There was, in a corner of the world, a wonder of the world; this wonder was called the Summer Palace. Art has two principles, the Idea, which produces European art, and the Chimera, which produces oriental art. The Summer Palace was to chimerical art what the Parthenon is to ideal art. All that can be begotten of the imagination of an almost extra-human people was there. It was not a single, unique work like the Parthenon. It was a kind of enormous model of the chimera, if the chimera can have a model. Imagine some inexpressible construction, something like a lunar building, and you will have the Summer Palace. 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 with the face of a temple and palace, such was this building. The slow work of generations had been necessary to create it. This edifice, as enormous as a city, had been built by the centuries, for whom? For the peoples. For the work of time belongs to man. Artists, poets and philosophers knew the Summer Palace; Voltaire talks of it. People spoke of the Parthenon in Greece, the pyramids in Egypt, the Coliseum in Rome, Notre-Dame in Paris, the Summer Palace in the Orient. If people did not see it they imagined it. It was a kind of tremendous unknown masterpiece, glimpsed from the distance in a kind of twilight, like a silhouette of the civilization of Asia on the horizon of the civilization of Europe.

This wonder has disappeared.

One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned. Victory can be a thieving woman, or so it seems. The devastation of the Summer Palace was accomplished by the two victors acting jointly. Mixed up in all this is the name of Elgin, which inevitably calls to mind the Parthenon. What was done to the Parthenon was done to the Summer Palace, more thoroughly and better, so that nothing of it should be left. All the treasures of all our cathedrals put together could not equal this formidable and splendid museum of the Orient. It contained not only masterpieces of art, but masses of jewelry. What a great exploit, what a windfall! One of the two victors filled his pockets; when the other saw this he filled his coffers. And back they came to Europe, arm in arm, laughing away. Such is the story of the two bandits.

We Europeans are the civilized ones, and for us the Chinese are the barbarians. This is what civilization has done to barbarism.

Before history, one of the two bandits will be called France; the other will be called England. But I protest, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity! the crimes of those who lead are not the fault of those who are led; Governments are sometimes bandits, peoples never.

The French empire has pocketed half of this victory, and today with a kind of proprietorial naivety it displays the splendid bric-a-brac of the Summer Palace. I hope that a day will come when France, delivered and cleansed, will return this booty to despoiled China.

Meanwhile, there is a theft and two thieves.

I take note.

This, Sir, is how much approval I give to the China expedition.

1st remark:
Victor Hugo, in order to decorate his Guernesey house, bought some sumptuous silk fabrics from an English officer who took part in the looting…

2nd remark:
Two stolen bronze statues, part of a zodiacal fountain conceived by the French Jesuit missionary Michel Benoist, bought by tailor Yves Saint Laurent, have been put in sale in February 2009. Beijing tried to get it back, without success.

3rd remark:
In 1900, whatever buildings survived were destroyed by what the Chinese call the Eight-Power Allied Forces (八国联军) who were in Beijing relieving the ‘Siege of Peking’ and putting down the Boxer Rebellion. At the same time, they also vandalized and destroyed parts of the new Summer Palace (颐和园). Both times, the looting was calculated to humiliate the Qing Dynasty court.
The ruins were further scavenged by Chinese treasure hunters, which was positively encouraged during the Cultural Revolution.

 
 
Sources:
Ancien palais d’été (in French)
Old Summer Palace
The sack of the summer palace