Sai Chin Hua: The Fortunes of a Chinese Singing Girl

Nineteen hundred was an evil year for the citizens of Peking. Throughout the spring, the enthusiasts known as “Boxers,” who were sworn to exterminate not only foreigners but also Chinese converts to Christianity, had kept the surrounding countryside in a state of terror.

Then in June, at the instigation of the Empress Dowager and the Court, these fanatics seized control of the capital itself and for two months, with the help of the imperial troops, laid siege to the foreign legations.

During this period, the Pekingese suffered such outrages from the Boxers that some of them may not have been displeased when in the middle of August an international force relieved the legations and took possession of the city.

Forty years earlier an Anglo-French army had occupied Peking and had gone away without inflicting much more damage than the destruction of an imperial pleasure garden, an act of vandalism that did not impose hardship on the people.