Yuanmingyuan Park

This guide to Yuanmingyuan Park in Beijing opens in September 1860, when Qing forces seized a British diplomat named Harry Parkes and a group of British and French officers who had ridden out under a truce flag during the Second Opium War, binding them with wet rope and holding them for weeks. It follows Lord Elgin's response when the survivors returned with their story, and the choice he made about where to aim it, at the emperor's private garden rather than the throne room where he ruled. Walk the grounds slowly, the guide points out details easy to miss along the paths.