Peculiar enough, the western invaders demonstrated an ambivalent attitude towards evaluating the significance of Yuan Ming Yuan: on the one hand, on the other hand, the westerns attempted to portray Yuan Ming Yuan through a filter of Oriental discourse and colonialism. For example, the General de Montauban from France reported that “nothing in our Europe can give an idea of comparable luxury,” while simultaneously denounced the legitimacy of Yuan Ming Yuan: “What is sad amidst all these splendors of the past is the neglect and abdication of the current government and the two or three governments that preceded it.” The comparable height of artistic sophistication that two civilizations achieved is contrasted by an emphasis of the political incompetence of the Qing dynasty, and therefore gives rise to the superiority of European civilization over the Chinese one. This power imbalance soon manifested itself through the fate of Yuan Ming Yuan, as it ultimately led to a deliberate destruction of this architectural
Peculiar enough, the western invaders demonstrated an ambivalent attitude towards evaluating the significance of Yuan Ming Yuan: on the one hand, on the other hand, the westerns attempted to portray Yuan Ming Yuan through a filter of Oriental discourse and colonialism. For example, the General de Montauban from France reported that “nothing in our Europe can give an idea of comparable luxury,” while simultaneously denounced the legitimacy of Yuan Ming Yuan: “What is sad amidst all these splendors of the past is the neglect and abdication of the current government and the two or three governments that preceded it.” The comparable height of artistic sophistication that two civilizations achieved is contrasted by an emphasis of the political incompetence of the Qing dynasty, and therefore gives rise to the superiority of European civilization over the Chinese one. This power imbalance soon manifested itself through the fate of Yuan Ming Yuan, as it ultimately led to a deliberate destruction of this architectural