More global visitors getting historical insight thanks to palace ruins

When Frenchman Remi Launay, 29, visited Beijing's Yuanmingyuan, or Old Summer Palace, in summer, the lines of a letter by famous French poet and novelist Victor Hugo engraved on the stone provoked his emotions.

"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. ... One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned," the 19th century writer had penned.

As Launay, from Le Mans, somberly looked around the site, he kept asking his Chinese friend, Qin Tong, also 29, why the French army had committed its acts against the palace of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) emperors — invading Anglo-French forces had set the royal resort on fire and looted it in 1860.

It was a tragedy, that such a magnificent complex was destroyed, Launay says.

When the duo subsequently shared their emotional reaction to the Yuanmingyuan visit on popular Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, the move became an online hit, reflecting a growing interest in the site and Chinese history among local residents and foreigners alike.

Launay himself went to Yuanmingyuan amid an increasing ease of travel to China, following measures related to visa-free entry to the country for French visitors rolled out in late 2023.

Yuanmingyuan was also chosen because of convenient transportation to access it, Qin says.

Commenting on the two friends' post online, Beijing resident Chloe Wang shared her own story about visiting Yuanmingyuan with her husband Joseph, 38, an architectural designer from the United Kingdom with an interest in Chinese mortise-and-tenon joint building techniques.